Thursday, August 22, 2013

South Carolina Public Death Records

By Claire Dowell


Vital records such as death certificates are open to the general public. The state of South Carolina, through its Department of Health and Environmental Control (SCDHEC), stores, maintains, and disseminates South Carolina death records and other vital reports for the state. The SCDHEC's Office of Vital Records is responsible for providing the public adequate access to the various public documents they need. This is the main agency that citizens can contact when they need access to certified copies of their vital dossiers.

There may be a number of reasons for an individual's interest towards a specific public document such as a death certificate; he may need it to validate a family member's passing in certain legal transactions, he may need the information listed in a standard death report for a genealogy research, or he may just want to learn about the passing of a particular ancestor. On the other hand, there are also those who may already have copies of important documents hidden away, but due to calamities like floods or fires, the files were unfortunately destroyed.

Death reports from January of 1915 onwards are available at the Office of Vital Records in the state of South Carolina. However, there are cities in the state that keep earlier reports. The city of Florence, for instance, has death reports between 1895 and 1914 on file at the Florence County Health Department. Newberry has ledger entries that date back to the late 1800s accessible at the Newberry County Health Department. And the city of Charleston has death records as early as 1821 stored on file at the Charleston County Health Department.

Unfortunately, those three county offices are the only entities that posses some of the earliest death reports in the state of South Carolina. If you are interested in the death certificate of an ancestor who died in one of those three cities, you may want to consider contacting the health department of that particular city for enquiries and additional information on the requirements and current fees. Certified copies of death reports ordered from the Office of Vital Records, on the other hand, will cost you twelve dollars each. And if you are planning to request multiple copies of the same document, you will be paying an additional three dollars for every duplicate. Payments must be in the form of a money order or a cashier's check, made payable to the SCDHEC.

If you consider the type of information gathering methods we employ today, they are significantly more advanced compared to the way data is collected in the past. But given the resources we now have, adhering to certain polices and requirements can sometimes make things more daunting than it really is. Because of this, a lot of people are still quite hesitant of taking advantage of the state services and programs that allow access to a variety of public records. Luckily, there are reliable alternatives that are available online.

Today, commercial record providers are gaining popularity online as a reliable and convenient source of vital information. If you are interested in a free death records search that doesn't require you to adhere to strict policies, then a reputable online record provider may just be the resource that you need. For a diminutive one-time membership fee, you will be granted access to a comprehensive public record database that is up-to-date and accurate. You can essentially perform as many searches as you want without having to pay for each time you do so. The service is efficient, inexpensive, and practical. There is literally no reason why you shouldn't give it a try.




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