50 Years of Pa. Death Records Now Available Online for Free

Thanks to a collaboration between Pennsylvania and ancestry.com, more than 7 million Pennsylvania death records are now available online to commonwealth residents.

The new collection on ancestry.com “contains all of the publicly available death records from the Pennsylvania State Archives from 1906 until 1963,” the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission said.

In order to access the death records, Pennsylvania residents must first set up free Ancestry.com Pennsylvania accounts. Instructions for doing so can be found here.

“Genealogists and the general public often turn to death records to track down family history, discover places of burial and investigate medical conditions and diseases,” the historical commission said.

The implementation of this collaboration stems from Act 110, which was signed into law by Gov. Tom Corbett in December 2011. Act 110 allows for public access to birth records after 105 years, and to death record after 50 years.