Mississippi Death Certificate Index PDF Files

To the left are links to the actual death certificate index that can be found in the State Archives. Statewide registration of deaths started in 1912. This index goes from 1912 to 1943.

If you want a Mississippi death certificate for a death that occurs after 1943, you will need to contact the Mississippi Department of Health or use VitalChek. If some of the pages are hard to read, there's not much I can do about that. In my experience, some of the hard-to-read pages were more viewable at the archives. If you have any questions, you can email the county coordinator.

Using the Index:

All of the index years contain basic information such as the decedent's name, race, the county (sometimes listed as a county code) they died in and the id # for the death certificate. Some of the years are arranged alphabetically and some are also arranged by sound like the picture below.

Before using the index arranged by sound, you need to find the soundex code that corresponds with the surname you're looking for. This is the link to the State Archives Soundex Helper. For example, if you were to search for Auston, Austin or Aston, the result would be A235 for all three since they sound similiar. The names are listed in blocks of A, then B, then C, etc. but within each letter's section, the names are arranged by sound. So for instance, with A235, you would find the A section, and then search for 235.

Next, there are race and county codes. In some of the index pages, the letters "w" or "c" are use in regards to the race of a person, "w" referring to white and "c" to colored while numbers are used in others. I only know that 1 refers to white and 2 to black. I don't know what any of the other numbers refer to. It's a similar situation when it comes to county codes. In some pages, the county is simply abbreviated while in other pages you'll need to know the code that refers to the county you're looking for. That chart is pictured below.

Another thing. When you go to the state archives and view the microfilms that contain the death certificate, all of the entries are in order. Whether it's the pages where every entry is arranged alphabetically or the pages where all the A's are arranged by sound and then all of the B's are arranged by sound, they all go from A to Z. The files to the left aren't exactly like that. It looks like they scanned in pages from one source (possibly microfiche) and then scanned in pages from the microfilm (which is probably what most people use when going to the archives). So in a file that contains 800 pages, the first 80 pages might go from A to Z and then it starts all over again at A. So if you don't find who you're looking for in the first set of pages, keep scrolling down and you should run into another set of pages.