FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Contact: Communications Department, (573) 522-1009

Missouri State Archives release 1962 death certificates

JEFFERSON CITY, MO. — MISSOURI Secretary of State Jason Kander today announced the Missouri State Archives has placed online 49,000 of the state’s 1962 death certificates. Each January the Archives, a division of his office, receives another year of records from the Department of Health and Senior Services as they become available to the public after a period of 50 years.

The newly-released 1962 death certificates include those of former Missouri Governor James T. Blair Jr. and his wife Emilie, who both died as a result of unintentional carbon monoxide poisoning; Irma S. Rombauer, author of one of the all-time bestselling cookbooks, The Joy of Cooking; and the victims of Continental Airlines Flight 11, which resulted in the Putnam County plane crash.

Volunteers from the Jefferson City area cleaned and organized the certificates at the Missouri State Archives before they were scanned. Others helped from home, indexing the original certificates using an online e-Volunteer application. Certificates were placed online just seven days after they became available for indexing thanks to the participation of more than 270 e-Volunteers.

"The indexing of Missouri death certificates is one of the most worthwhile and popular projects coordinated by the Archives," Kander said. “Through this project, we are able to provide Missourians unprecedented access to public records revealing detailed information about their families and communities. I'm thankful to all the volunteers that helped with this project, and everything else we do in the Archives, to help make our state's past accessible to Missourians. I have used the system myself to search for relatives, and encourage all Missourians to do the same and see what they can uncover."

The Missouri State Archives first placed a searchable index to Missouri's death certificates online in April 2006. Today, historians, genealogists and others have free, immediate access to more than 2.36 million death certificates from 1910–1962.

To view the death certificates and other online collections of the Missouri State Archives, go to www.sos.mo.gov/mdh/. For information on additional volunteer opportunities with the Archives, please call (573) 526-6711 or email archvol@sos.mo.gov.

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