This was going to be called “fuzzy math” as it is about the number of vital records that are sitting in the Department of Health (DOH) in Albany.

Back on Nov. 28th I guessed that if you add up the number of birth, marriage and death records it would amount to 3 billion total records. That was WAY off.

On the new NY Death Index website they say they have over 10 million death records. Somehow on one of my wild searches it showed the exact number of death records is 10,877,708 up to 2017. I added about 800,000 more deaths between 2018 to today. Because they are always more births than deaths, I am saying there were 17 million births recorded between 1880 and today. Add in another 17 million marriage records. I know that not everyone got married but there are also people that married 4 or 5 times that makes up for those that never married.

So my best guess is that DOH has at least 46 million vital records. I sure would like to know the exact number but I don’t think the DOH would know the total.