The New York City Department of Records and Information Services has announced free access to more than 9.3 million historical vital records on its website.
Users can search and view historical New York City records of births (1866-1909), marriages (1866-1949) and deaths (1862-1948). High quality copies can be downloaded and printed from the website free of charge.
Digitizing of the collection began in 2013 and is 70 percent complete. When finished there will be over 13 millions records on the website.
The collection can be browsed or can be search by certificate number or last name. Certificate numbers can be found in indexes of the birth, death, and marriage records on the following websites:Ancestryy, German Genealogy Group, Italian Genealogical Group and FamilySearch.
Searching by name is in beta mode, and may not produce accurate results. Because marriage licenses are not yet indexed by name, marriage licenses will not be returned in name search results.
The searchable index used on this site was created by the Long Island Genealogy Federation by transcribing original hard-copy indexes.
To start searching, go to: https://a860-historicalvitalrecords.nyc.gov/
It is still possible to obtained certified copies of vital records if desired. For more information, go to: https://a860-historicalvitalrecords.nyc.gov/digital-vital-records
