Why are all of Ancestry.com's state-wide Birth/Marriage/Death records (BMD) so spotty and patchy? Searching for BMD records is virtually POINTLESS for any State here on Ancestry.com.

Yes, some states have certain bits and pieces of records (for example, 1860-1910 transcribed marriage records for a random State). But even these lack the IMAGE of the record itself.

It should be a HUGE priority for Ancestry.com to get as many scanned and indexed BMD records from every state in the United States online as fast as possible!! You guys have done a terrific job with all the U.S. Census records...now it is time to start seriously recording the next most important U.S. record type, which is the BMD records.

Anyway, I hope someone on Ancestry.com takes this to heart, though I doubt anyone from the site will even reply. I will just get a bunch of "yes I agrees" from fellow members. Maybe I am just wasting my time trying to give suggestions to Ancestry.com here?

Not to apologize for Ancestry because you are right, there should be more images-however, some states sell those documents and maybe that is why there are not more of them. Some states are completely lacking. There are some though-(death certificates mostly) that can be found on the various state web sites. Missouri has some, and the Mormon site-family search record labs-has more although some of theirs are only transcripts such as the ones for Florida and Alabama. The transcripts are helpful but are still dependant on someone recognizing and spelling the names correctly which in some cases is quite difficult to do. There are a great many death certificates for the state of Texas-some for South and North Carolina as well and some for Kentucky.

Thanks for the reply. Through your post, and others I have encountered, I am starting to realize the (very) annoying copyright/legal reasons why Ancestry.com has not uploaded certain documents. It is extremely fusterating for genealogists, and I am sure Ancestry.com, too.

I do wish, however, that Ancestry.com would link users to certain types of digitized documents that they know they will never be able to digitize due to stupid copyright/legal/whatever reasons.

For (a possibly bad) example, West Virginia has digitised a large amount of Birth/Marriage/Death records, and have them online at -

http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_select.aspx

If, for whatever the heck reason, Ancestry.com is not allowed to digitise these records, why cannot Ancestry.com create an agreement with these sites to LINK to them. So if someone on Ancestry.com searches for a B/M/D record from West Virginia, they will be linked to an Ancestry.com page that explains the legal/copyright/whatever situation, and that if they want to continue to to search, to goto the West Virginia Vital Records site.

Anyway, I just feel like Ancestry is a HUGE resource, but linking to other sites with good information is good too. Genealogy has always been a community-based thing, and linking to these other great sites would encourage that.

In conclusion, if Ancestry.com cannot aquire certain records due to whatever-the-hell legal reason, they should LINK friend-ily to them. Then let Ancestry.com members know the situation and let them continue if they want.

Thanks for listening.

Rob Williams

Ancestry.com is not a genealogical-research entity. It is a corporation that markets access to the databases it acquires, with a focus on the genealogical market.

Most vital records were not kept by States until around 100 years ago. They were kept by Counties and by religious entities. This is not frustrating for the genealogist willing to do the work to find the records. They are mostly there, where they were made (with the exception of early church records and cases where records wre destroyed by fire/flood).

Many states have their own legislation governing such things as time frames for release of records for public access.

In a great many states sale of copies of vital records supports the operations that create and maintain the records. It does not make sense to them to shift more of the cost of supporting these entities to their taxpayers so that non-residents can upload the documents from home at very minimal expense.

It can be a huge challenge to get BMD records. Most states have laws restricting when the records can be released, if at all. Lots of them are around 100 years, about the time when many states were just becoming states. Ancestry has put in a major effort in the past several years to negotiate and get what they can, but working with governments of any kind is not a speedy process. They are coming online slowly but steadily.

Hi My name is Dianna Peterson. I saw your fam tree today. My husbands father was Raymond O. Peterson, his father Valentine Peterson, son of Olaf Nidos Peterson.

I am trying to find more info on yor grandfather Oscar. I would appreciate all that you can supply.
Thanks in advance, Di Peterson

To Rob Williams Re: West Virginia records online-thanks so much for the info. Many of my early Lloyd family were born in Virginia in the counties that became West Virginia. I log every site that contains state records and just found a great marriage record for one of my Lloyds which includes the whole marriage certificate. If anyone knows of other states which contain vital images, please reply to this message board. Whether Ancestry acknowledges that site or has a link to it is immaterial because these records can be downloaded and kept.

Michigan death certificates are online at
http://seekingmichigan.org/discover-collection?collection=p1...

Record Search pilot has some and is adding more all the time.
http://pilot.familysearch.org/recordsearch/start.html#p=allC...

Thanks. Yes, I have those. Missouri birth and death records are online too at

http://sos.mo.gov/archives/resources/birthdeath/