Brooke <asparagirl@...> wrote:

These Surrogate's Court records are not only open but also *free* (plus the
minor cost of any Xeroxes) to get in-person for years between 1964 and the
present. You can also get them prior to 1964, but they would need to be
ordered a few days ahead of time, because they're not on site.

Yes the tip about Probate files is a good one but in some cases they are
removing death certificates >from the files when they review the files due to
the privacy rules.

I did a whole presentation about Probate that Boston Conference last August
and will be doing the presentation regionally in the coming months. Some
times you can find much more in probate files .... birth certificates, family
trees, lists of heirs explaining the relationship, etc.

One other note specific to Manhattan, the off site files take weeks not days
to retrieve. But if the file is small the court will scan it and email it to
you so that you do not need to make a second trip to the court.

There are indexes for some of the NYC files on the LDS FamilyHistory site but
it is only the indexes of the earlier files. The older files are index on
the computer, the mid range ie the 1960s are still on index cards at the court
and the newest ones 1980s onwards are all on the computer for the index only.

Allan Jordan