New Indexes to Free NYC Digitized Vital Records

The New York City Municipal Archives has been digitizing old birth, marriage, and death records and posting them on this site for a while now. Not all years for all boroughs, but many are already posted and more are on the way. Free! 

The latest news: On April 11th, the city posted a set of indexes for the very first time, simplifying the process of locating the exact vital record.

New indexes! Part 1 of new search process

The indexes for NYC birth certs, death certs, marriage certs, and marriage licenses can be seen here. These online indexes streamline the entire process, still free.

Pick the index you want and start a search for the NAME of the person. Below, an example of a search for the birth certificate for Charles Lang. I entered his name in the search box. Results are displayed in ascending chronological order. The Charles Lang entry that I want is at the bottom, born in Manhattan, birth cert #22907, birth year 1906. 

This is part 1 of the search, so note those cert details or open another tab on your browser.

Part 2 of the search process

Now go to the NYC Muni search page for the type of cert you want, birth or marriage or death. This is part 2 of the search: Enter what you just learned from the index, as shown below in my sample search for a birth cert. Click the purple search button below the data entry boxes. 

The result

As shown in the image below, this search returns a color image, in a downloadable pdf format (printable as well). Vital records may not be available forever, so do grab a digital copy while you can. 

Free! No need to purchase a certified copy unless you have a special purpose in mind that requires certification. So first check the index, then do the cert search. In the old days (before the indexes), there was an extra step to this process to obtain the cert number, borough, and year. Usually those details can be found on Ancestry, FamilySearch, etc. 

FYI today, in April of 2025, FamilySearch does have these NYC vital records but the images are not visible from home, only in a FamilySearch library. And I want to eyeball the document image for myself, so I either use the free NYC Muni Archives or use my subscription to MyHeritage.

MyHeritage search - not free but really easy!

If you're a MyHeritage subscriber, like me, you are in great luck--MyHeritage has a unique collection of historic New York City vital records, with its own set of indexes and color scans of the certs. Plus MyHeritage indexes not only bride and groom but also the names of their parents!

Very easy searching. And the benefit of a full color image is that any marks or alterations on the certificate are quite obvious. See the example below from a MyHeritage search for a 1903 birth cert for my great uncle Fred. The magenta shows important corrections inserted years after this man's birth. Among other things, his birth was registered as female instead of male, his surname listed as Forkus instead of Farkas. Neither parent's name was correct either. But Fred straightened out all these details in 1942.

I can download and/or print the image, as well as connecting it to my family tree.

Happy ancestor hunting in the Big Apple!

PS FamilySearch image of Charles Lang birth cert is not in color. Same exact cert, not in color. 

Easier Way to Find Jennie's Marriage Cert

Yesterday, I showed the steps taken to find my great aunt Jennie's marriage cert from 1916. She and great uncle Alex were married in New York City on Christmas Eve of 1916. 

My gen friend Lara Diamond, who knows a thing or three about Big Apple vital records databases, suggested an easier way to find Jennie's marriage cert--a method that would remove more than 700 clicks from the process! **

Lara's method has specific steps to follow but saves time because it allows me to more quickly get to the NYC cert by narrowing the number of images to browse.

Step 1

Go to the ItalianGen.org databases, which include vital records indexes for New York City. Select either the bride's or groom's record of marriage certs. As shown in the image above, many of these have been indexed by the wonderful volunteers at Italian Gen for selected years in all five boroughs. 

Step 2 

Enter the name of the bride (as I did in the image directly above) or use the groom's database, and be sure to specify a year or range of years. You can enter as much info as you know, or leave the search broader. I only used "J" for the bride's name, since I wasn't sure whether the cert would show her as "Jenny" or "Jennie."  

The third search result in the listing was my great aunt Jennie, who married Farkas, Alexander. 

The key piece of info here is the CertNbr which means the actual certificate number. Lara's insight was to use the cert number to jump ahead in the unindexed but browsable images on Family Search. Here, I'll be looking for cert #31504.

Step 3

Since I already knew the correct digitized microfilm number on Family Search, I could go to that digitized file and look at the early cert numbers in the batch. 

Then I estimated how many certs to jump ahead in order to find #31504. This saved me hundreds of clicks. I only had to spot-check the number of a cert many dozens of images away to see how close I was getting to the cert number I wanted

Remember, without the cert number, I needed to click through every cert because the digitized certs are not in chronological order--they're in cert order. If I didn't know the cert number, I couldn't skip ahead.

Step 3 alternative

What if I didn't know where on Family Search to look for these browsable images? Lara recommends going to SteveMorse.org and using his one-step tools to find the correct batch of certs. See image of search on his site, shown below.

Using Steve Morse's tools, I input the groom's and bride's names, plus place of marriage and year. This search jumped me to the Family Search site, at the beginning of the microfilmed batch I was seeking. (Jump doesn't always work, so also consult the FamilySearch wiki here.)

Then I proceeded to quickly look for the correct cert number, by skipping through the lower numbers until I got to the approximate place for the correct number of my great aunt's cert.

Thank you to Lara for this streamlined method of locating NYC marriage certs!

--

** Lara just added this: "There’s an easier way still. Do the same groom search you did. But click “search IGG.” You get the cert number, but in the far right, there is “click here” which brings you to the right film, close to the cert you want."

PS from me: If all else fails, consider asking for your cert or other info via the Family History Library lookup service. They are nice folks and try hard to fulfill requests!