The Death Certificate My Scanner Would Not Copy

Genealogy rule: make digital copies of all records, mementos, pictures, letters.

(And make backup copies.)

The death certificate for my recently departed paternal aunt was issued by the local town. The document was printed on 8 1/2 by 14 inch legal-size paper, which is awkward to store and scan.

New Jersey certificate of death
Issued May 2026

I have an older, no-frills scanner that is too short for fourteen inch documents. I tried a newer, more sophisticated scanner that could accommodate legal size paper. The scanner refused!

Modern New Jersey death certificates contained security features that some scanners detect and block from copying. Sometimes these security features cause the word "VOID" to appear faintly in scanned images. I would have been satisfied with such a result, but this scanner refused to scan the document at all.

Example of "VOID" appearing if document is copied

An iPhone 17 ultimately captured the image.

New Jersey offers a "certification" of a death record for genealogy, which can be copied; however, the Social Security number and causes of death are redacted. I prefer unredacted records when possible.

Organize at the Scene

While researching on the recent trip to Albany, New York, I photographed lots of indexes of births, marriages, and deaths from the microfiche reader.  The top of each page listed the event type (birth, marriage, or death) and the year, but not the state.  If the desired information was near the bottom of the page, the heading was not visible.

New York State Death Index for the year 1926
on microfiche at the New York State Archives in Albany

New York State Death Index for the year 1911

A simple organizational trick eliminated confusion later.  I hand-wrote the year, type of event, and state on a piece of paper and included the information in each snapshot.  You do not want to have a great entry but no idea of its source.

Organize

I proudly present a better organization of my genealogical papers and photographs.

These boxes are from the Stockholm collection available at The Container Store.  You can shop online if you are not fortunate enough to have a store near you.

Someday I will have a master list of the contents of these files, but for now, these boxes are far better than the towering piles I have been navigating.  Most of my newly acquired records never morph into a paper version.  I am able to shoot clear photos with my iPhone and libraries are increasingly offering scanners in lieu of photocopiers.

The amount of records becoming available is staggering.  You need to be organized to collect, process, and retain the information or you will waste time retracing your steps.

Rather than print out a grainy copy of this obituary from the Bayonne Times,
I snapped a picture with my iPhone and edited with Picasa by Google.
Unfortunately, I can't find the piece of paper where I was writing down the dates and page numbers.
It will turn up.  I can figure out the date of the paper by her death certificate.