Shhhh! I have a secret that I want to share with you. But don’t. tell. anyone. If I’m in a hurry to get a death certificate that isn’t available at the Family History Library, I’ll often order it from Vitalchek.com. This can be difficult sometimes because they ask for a specific date of death in a specific city. Here’s the trick: If you only know the year of death, but not the month or day, all you have to do is enter January 1 of that year, and they’ll know that you don’t have the specific date of death.

Example: I knew that a man died in 1967 in a town in Missouri, but I didn’t know the specific day and month of death. He was not listed in the Social Security Death Index. Upon the instructions of a VitalChek employee, I entered 1 January 1967 when the VitalChek website asked for the exact date of this man’s death. This alerted the employees at the vital records agency that handled my request that I didn’t know the exact date of death. They then searched their indexes for this man’s death date and certificate. I paid the rush fee for the certificate, and in less than a week, I had it in my hands, with, of course, his exact date of death listed on it. Quite the trick, I’d say.