Bumper stickers, T-shirts, tote bags, license plate holders, mugs, notepads. The spending power of genealogists hasn't gone unnoticed by marketers and entrepreneurs.

Many family historians have a collection of these genealogical doodads, all with witty comments about genealogy.

"Caution: I brake for cemeteries." "I collect dead ancestors." "Genealogy: It's a grave business." "Genealogy: waking the dead."

You'd think that genealogists are obsessed with death. Not really. We're actually more interested in the lives of our dead ancestors than their deaths.

Nevertheless, we do spend a lot of time tromping through cemeteries and scouring death records. The end of an ancestor's life is often where we begin our ancestral quest, working our way backward.

That's good news for researchers with New Mexico roots because a massive index of New Mexico deaths is on the Internet.

Volunteers extracted names, ages and counties from thousands of state-issued death certificates from 1899 to 1949. The result is the New Mexico Death Index Project.

Surf the project's home page

You'll find alphabetical links to the index. The index includes name, death date and age. Most of the ages have three digits, such as 486. No, your ancestor wasn't a modern-day Methuselah. That means he died at age 48 years and six months.

For later deaths, be sure to follow the link to the Death Index, Part II.

Just like most online resources, this index is simply a road sign on your way to genealogical pay dirt. Use the index to help you track down the actual death certificate. Microfilmed copies are at the Special Collections Library in Downtown Albuquerque.

Want more online help for your New Mexico research? Check out the data uploaded by volunteers on the American Local History Network's New Mexico page.

How about 19,000 Roosevelt County marriages? Or, 65,000 Grant County death records, including over 11,000 obituaries? Or, dozens of photos of tombstones from around the state?

This site has all of that and many more resources to aid your New Mexico research.

Another great site is the New Mexico Digital Collection hosted by the University of New Mexico. The site has thousands of digital images related to New Mexico history and ancestors. It's at

Here you'll find more than 2,400 photos from the Palace of the Governors' photo archives. There are also images of hundreds of documents related to land grants.

Maybe you'll spot one of your Albuquerque ancestors in the more than 800 photos taken at Cobbs Studios in the first half of the 20th century.

Also, be sure to surf the Archive of New Mexico

This online catalog of major repositories in New Mexico will point you to useful records about your ancestors.

Next week, I'll review some of the helpful resources for tracing your Hispanic ancestors in New Mexico.