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Archiver > ALT-GENEALOGY > 1999-01 > 0915933496


From: Richard A. Pence< >
Subject: Re: Social Security Death Index
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1999 01:58:16 GMT


(Ernest Thode) wrote:

>but when checking a relative's death, I find some of them have
>misinterpreted the ZIP for his place of death, some don't.

Ernest - A reminder: The SSDI does NOT give a place of death.

Provision is made for two ZIP codes in most renditions of the SSDI.
The first is the ZIP for the address of record of the deceased person.
The second, usually only given when it differs from the first, is the
ZIP from the address where the final benefit check was sent (e.g., to
the home of an heir). As you can see, neither of these is necessarily
the place of death - but they would be logical places to look for an
obituary.

Also, keep in mind that the ZIPs are as entered in the SSA Master
Death Index and reflect the codes as of the time of death. Many of the
ZIPs have changed over the years. In order to properly extrapolate the
city from the provided ZIP, you would need access to a ZIP directory
for the year of death.

Each provider of the SSDI likely has its own database to expand the
ZIP to a city and these might vary, depending on when they are
updated. (Putting a new ZIP interpreter with the SSDI will not, of
course, give more accurate results - it will merely give different
results! <G>)

I am wondering if anyone knows if the source files for the SSDI - the
SSA Master Death Index - contain the actual addresses or if it, too,
is limited to merely a ZIP.

Thanks for the URLs of the various SSDI sites and it is also good to
know that Cambridge Research Associates is still around somewhere. In
the days before CDs and the Net you used to be able to get lookups
from them at nominal cost - I got all PENCE entries in the SSDI in
comma-delimited format for a bit of $20 and this data seemed to be
quite accurate.

Regards,
Richard A. Pence <>
Pence Family History <http://www.pipeline.com/~richardpence/index.htm&g

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