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Statewide registration of deaths in Pennsylvania began in January 1906. Records prior to 1906 were kept by individual counties or cities under various laws and time periods. The death registrations in this publication are a result of legislation approved by the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania on June 6, 1893. The Act required the Clerk of the Orphan’s Court for each county to keep a separate record of deaths occurring within their county. It was the duty of the assessors of the townships, boroughs, and wards to conduct a semi-annual recording of such deaths on a preprinted form (see example).
This law did not affect cities where a system for the registration of deaths had already been established. These include Pittsburgh, Allegheny City, and McKeesport. Those cities have been scanned separately by FamilySearch and are available online.
In 1986, WPGS created an index of the death records (available at WPGS.org). The source of the information for each death is shown by the document number assigned by Allegheny County. Document numbers are provided for each entry with the exception of a few surnames. Many of the ledger pages were torn and contained missing pieces. Abstractors working on this project made every effort to ascertain the name of the deceased, year of death, and place of death, but in some cases it was impossible. These entries are listed at the end of the book. Questionable entries are contained within brackets [ ].
Most of the original registrations include the name of the deceased, color, sex, age, marital status, place of birth, occupation, date of death, place of death, the cause of death, duration of last sickness, place of internment, and date of internment. The names of the father and mother are provided (in most cases) if the deceased was a minor. In cases where the surname of the child was not provided, the surname of the parents was used, followed by the notation (P).
The scans available now are organized by township or borough according to how Allegheny County organized them. The scanning initiative was a 2023-24 project of the Western Pennsylvania Genealogical Society in and with the support of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. Volunteers include Kristin Britanik, Pamela Israel, David McNelis, Rebecca Kichta Miller, Paul Trimbur and Amy Welch.
Driving map of Allegheny County, Pa. circa 1886. Map from the University of Pittsburgh Archives & Special Collections, Darlington Digital Library via Historic Pittsburgh. (Sheet 1, Sheet 2)
To view the death records, either click on the map above, or choose from the list of municipalities below. Note: some smaller municipalities are omitted from the map. The links lead to a PDF file on Google Drive. Some files are too large to open within the browser and must be downloaded.
