Where do I go from here?      Alabama Death  Home     copies for $3 form      Back to Lesson Index Page   Leave me a note I can't find a name on the Alabama Death Index   By Susette Cook In the early years 1908-1920 sometimes people were missed. For one reason or another-- poor record keeping, flu epidemic. After 1920 things worked much better and  persons were seldom missed. Once in a while you get a person who was buried in Alabama but they actually died somewhere else. Death records are always in the state where they died.  So if a person lived in Alabama but died in Georgia then you would look in Georgia for the death certificate.  Maybe they actually died while serving in the war and they were shipped home to Alabama to be buried. Also in Alabama there were times that a family member died and no doctor was present and they were just buried in the family plot and a record was never made with the county or state. This sometimes happened in the early years but was not common after about 1930.  In this case the family bible may be the only record of the death and there will not be an Alabama death certificate for that person. During the Depression people left to go to work for the PWA and sometimes they died where ever they were working and got shipped home to be buried. The death certificate would then be in the state where the death occurred. The problem with ancestry is that many people are there but under a name you are not looking under.  The person you are searching for may be under  a nick name, middle name or first name and you only knew them by the middle or nick name. Often the person is listed by initials only.  Sometimes the name is  incorrectly transcribed  by the person inputting the information into the data base that was used to create the CD index.  Of maybe the mistake happened when the clerk misspelled or miss heard what was said---Perrin instead of Berrin. Sometimes the problem is you are not looking in the right county. It is possible that a person  died in one county but lived in another and was buried in a third county. The certificate would be in the county where the death actually occurred, not where they were buried or lived. And the index will reflect the county of death.  It is possible that the person died in a hospital in the next county over or was on a shopping trip and died in a car wreck or visiting someone when they died. Family stories are often incorrectly remembered. Often the index may say Thomas Cook but when you get the certificate you find that the certificate says Mrs. Thomas Cook.   Many times the index actually lists the name of the parent instead of the infant  that died and there is no way of knowing if that person listed in the index is the parent or the person that died until you look and the certificate and see that in the place of the name it says infant and when  you look down to the line for the parents you realize that the name for the father is the name that was listed in the index. McCarter might be listed as just Carter.  There really are 97  McCarter  names in the index. Also try flipping the first and last name like Henry Wilson and Wilson Henry. It should be noted that on the CD index the name Williams is spelled Willia,  Armstrong is left out all together and Adams is Ada.  There also may be others that I am not aware of.  All of these errors have been corrected in the online version at ancestry.com.  Sometimes the counties have been input incorrectly.  Green instead of Greene.   The Alabama Death Index CD will run wild card searches for any portion of the name, like B* or B*ly or *sky. The CD will run searches for dates only and so will the online version. Probably you should leave the day out and just put in the month and year because often the day you have may be the date of burial or it just may not be the exact one that appears on the death certificate. Basically try to think of every mistake that a person could possibly make and then perhaps you will find that very elusive name in the index.   So try searching again with these thoughts in mind. 1. different spellings of last and first name 2. under the middle name 3. under the initials 4. under nick name 5. in other counties other than the one where they should be (they could have died in another county in a car wreck or something) 6. looking under possible transcription errors -- such as Pattle instead of Battle   or  Ernest instead of Ernestine 7. different death date, tombstones are wrong 25% of the time. 8.  name of husband Now if you have searched and still can not find a listing in the index and it was in the early years 1908-1922 then you could check the county death records.  Note that I said county death records.  The death certificates that I send you are state records and created by the state of Alabama.  In some counties the county also kept a death record.  If the county kept death records also then there was usually an over lap of time.  And perhaps you could find the person that you are searching for in the county records. Click here to learn more about those county records and how to view them. How to find the Alabama Death Index click here.