After five years of work, the Cook Islands Ministry of Justice and FamilySearch International announced recently that birth, death and marriage records are now available to the public online at FamilySearch.org.
Close to 100,000 images were captured, containing hundreds of thousands of Cook Islands vital records.
Like many nations throughout the Pacific Islands and the world at large, the Genealogical Society of Utah (now known as FamilySearch International) was given approval by the government some years ago to microfilm many of the important records in the cook islands, including the genealogically rich birth, death, and marriage records.
Five years ago, discussions were initiated with the Ministry of Justice to convert the microfilm to a digital format and to make the images available on the FamilySearch.org website. The Ministry of Justice are the legal custodians of these important records.
In early 2017 the records started to appear on FamilySearch.org. Now an indexing project is underway to make the records more easily accessible.
FamilySearch representative in the South Pacific, Michael Higgins, says these records will open the door for Cook Islanders at home or overseas to learn more about their parents, grand-parents and other ancestors.
Watch a short video about family history research: