How to Use the Social Security Death Index (SSDI) to Search for Family History, Elvis, or Anyone Else

Your Social Security Number and related records are totally private...until you die! At that point, your record becomes part of a publicly available file known as the Social Security Death Index. There are currently more than 81 million records available in the SSDI. Here's how to use it to search for family history, information on famous dead people, or other ancestry and genealogy information.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

1. Head to the SSDI search page at http://ssdi.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ (see Resources, below, for a direct link to the SSDI site).
2. The King is, in fact, Dead Enter the information you have in the search box (eg, first and last names, social security numbers, etc).
   
   
   
   **Don't** get confused if you see a search box at the very top of the page; it's an advertisement. Use the SSDI interface.
3. Click on Advanced Search if you want to search on additional features, such as place or year of birth. This is especially useful if you are searching on a common name that would otherwise produce hundreds of results.
4. Click "Submit" to see the SSDI records for that name.
5. See the resource links directly below for more information on SSDI, family history, people search, obituaries, etc.