As genealogists with 20th century Iowa relatives know, Iowa law did not require births, marriages and deaths to be recorded at the county level between 1920 and 1941.\u00a0 These records were sent directly to the State.<\/p>\n
Although many clerks did continute to sporadically record these vital statistics, as\u00a0time allowed, most had stopped by 1930.\u00a0 This leaves a significant—and frustrating—gap in the records held by county courthouses\u00a0and genealogysocieties, libraries, and centers.\u00a0 And while these records can be requested through the Iowa Bureau of Health Statistics<\/a>, it is often difficult to do so without knowing, for example, the exact date of death—and indexes are few and far between for this time period.<\/p>\n Until now.<\/p>\n To help bridge this\u00a0\u00a0gap, the State Historical Society of Iowa<\/a> is assembling an index of state-level, pre-1935 death records for each county.\u00a0These indexes, which are .pdf documents,\u00a0 include the name of the deceased, the birth place and date,\u00a0the death date, the mother’s\u00a0maiden name, the certificate number, and the archive box number.<\/p>\n Not only is this information useful for the family charts, it will\u00a0assist the researcher\u00a0in ordering the correct record from the state.\u00a0<\/p>\n This project is very much a work in progress, but links to the completed indexes are on the SHSI State Archives Holdings<\/a> page on their website.\u00a0\u00a0 Once all the counties are completed, further records will be added in compliance with state law, which requires a seventy-five year holding period before\u00a0the release of state records.<\/p>\n Finally!\u00a0 A little closure for those of us who have—or think<\/em> we have—relatives who died in Iowa during this 20-year county record drought.<\/p>\n Thank you, SHSI!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As genealogists with 20th century Iowa relatives know, Iowa law did not require births, marriages and deaths to be recorded at the county level between 1920 and 1941.\u00a0 These records were sent directly to the State. Although many clerks did … Continue reading