Brent - What I find strange is that I cannot find my late husband on the SSDI - he was born in 1940; died in 1965 a 1st Lt. in the Army. I have questioned SS re: this omission and they said that they have him in their data and do not know why he is not on the SSDI. I use his birth and death information, and even his SS# - but he is not on any of the SSDI. So, as late as 1965 they were still omitting some from the list, and I thought that perhaps this applied to soldiers... it did not since some of his classmates who died not too long after he did, were on the list - go figure! At least they are constant in their inconsistency. It is important to keep in mind, regardless of how you have access to the Social Security Death Index, that until quite recently everybody did not have a Social Security number or card. The original law exempted quite a number of professions from the Social Security system, including many government and railroad employees, and I think that in some states teachers were not initially eligible. Which is to say that not finding a death record in the SSDI is not always the fault of the search engine but possibly a simple result of the Society Security system's not embracing everybody, including some people who worked as late as the 1970s or '80s. Brent Tarter The Library of Virginia [log in to unmask] Please visit the Library of Virginia's Web site at http://www.lva.virginia.gov To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-roots.html To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-roots.html