California Birth, Marriage, and Death (BMD) Record Links

7/28/2019

One of the main goals for genealogists is finding birth, marriage, and death (BMD) information about their ancestors.

Over the past few decades, thanks to volunteers, librarians and archivists (as well as the largest of them all - FamilySearch), a great number of indexes to birth, marriage, and death collections have been provided for free online. These searchable indexes provide specific BMD information, and sometimes scanned images of the actual birth, marriage, and death certificates themselves. These free online collections have hundreds of millions of records in them in total.

There are a great number of online and offline collections that may include birth, marriage, and death information that are not included in the lists below. For example, newspapers, draft registration files, naturalization records, etc. have BMD info. To find out which types of other records may include BMD information, please see:

The lists below are specific birth, marriage, and death indexes and record collections that are available for free online for the state of California.

Note 1: Many of the links listed below take you to a FamilySearch Collection of digital images. In many cases there is a link to the digital collection in the middle of the page, but also near the bottom of the page under Film/Digital Notes is the name of each sub-collection. If there is a camera icon at the right of the name (in the Format column) then the collections' images are browsable. If there is a camera with a key icon, it is only available at a Family History Center or affiliated library. If there is a film reel icon, then it is only available in microfilm format, not digital. Please also note that I have listed below only BMD databases that are accessible digitally from your computer (or tablet/phone)

Note 2: I have included links to Free Ancestry records and indexes. You do not need a subscription, but do need an Ancestry account. Without a subscription you can view indexes. If there is an image associated with a record, in most cases you will need a subscription, but the index does include very usable information.

(Updated July, 2019; recently added links are in BOLD)

General U.S.

California

Check out the links for other states on the BMD Records page.

Good Luck and Happy Hunting!

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4 Comments

Joan Doyle

5/1/2018 08:40:59 am

How do I get a copy of an article that I located through one of these indexes. Do I then need to contact the library directly?

Kenneth R Marks

5/1/2018 06:14:13 pm

Usually, the site where you found the article tells you how to get a copy with complete instructions. Hopefully the site where you found it has these instructions. They vary from site to site. Good Luck.

Jennifer Bryan

10/8/2018 09:06:27 pm

There is a web site with Siskiyou County, California Birth, Death and Marriage Indexes.
http://sites.rootsweb.com/~casiskiy/

Thank you
Jennifer Bryan

Kenneth R Marks

10/8/2018 09:11:22 pm

Thank you Jennifer. Didn't see that one for Siskiyou. I very much appreciate the help. I am able to find most of the links but not all. I will add these in my next update. Thanks!