First-ever Public Copies of the Death Index for Buffalo, New York, for the years 1852-1944

https://www.reclaimtherecords.org/?mc_cid=348bdb911b&mc_eid=87d2371d01

Reclaim the Records scored another big advance in obtaining records for genealogical research. Here is a quote from their announcement:

Hello again from Reclaim The Records! We're back with some great new records to share with everyone, obtained through a New York State Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request. We're happy to announce that we've obtained and published the first-ever public copies of the death index for Buffalo, New York, for the years 1852-1944 -- almost a full century of data! 

We don't have an exact count, but we estimate that there are about 640,000 names listed in these records. Buffalo was one of the top fifteen most populous American cities, and was occasionally in the top ten, during this 1852-1944 time period. 

These records have never been online before, nor were they on FamilySearch microfilm. They were only available if you physically sat in the Buffalo Inactive Records center, and that was all. Well, we at Reclaim The Records decided to change that. And here they are now!

• Buffalo Death Index, 1852 - 1884
• Buffalo Death Index, 1885 - 1891
• Buffalo Death Index, 1892 - 1894
• Buffalo Death Index, 1895 - 1896
• Buffalo Death Index, 1897 - 1902
• Buffalo Death Index, 1903 - 1908
• Buffalo Death Index, 1909 - 1914
• Buffalo Death Index, 1915 - 1919
• Buffalo Death Index, 1920 - 1924
• Buffalo Death Index, 1925 - 1928
• Buffalo Death Index, 1929 - 1932
• Buffalo Death Index, 1933 - 1936
• Buffalo Death Index, 1937 - 1941
• Buffalo Death Index, 1942 - 1944

You would think that the government offices in New York State would start to get the message by now that these public records are public. These records are being posted on the Internet Archive or Archive.org. You might make a note of that and realize that Archive.org is a valuable resource for original genealogically important records.

You may wish to read the complete explanation about these records from Buffalo. There are some really interesting comments about the lack of professionalism shown by both the City of Buffalo and the people they hired to do the digitization. Since I am starting to work at the Maryland State Archives, I can assure everyone that the work we do is subject to strict compliance with standards as to readability and format. Too bad the City of Buffalo didn't get FamilySearch to digitize the records.