Vital Records

Unless you are already 72 years old you will not likely find any census records that your are enumerated in. Therefore, I would begin with your birth certificate. Get the actual certified long form and see if there might be a surprise or two in terms of where you born or your parents’ names.

Vital records are an excellent resource and you should try to obtain the birth, marriage and death certificates for your immediate family members. This might be sensitive for living family members so tread lightly and do not press to get a look at an official record unless you have reason to.

One can only be born and die once so everyone most likely has but one certificate for both of those events. A person cannot only marry more money in a minute than he can earn in a lifetime, he can also marry several times over the course of his life. Aim to obtain every civil marriage record that your ancestors and close collateral relatives created over their lives. 

Marriage records often predate the other vital records by several decades. Marriage records come in a variety of forms from one line ledger entries to full page certificates. There might also be a license before a wedding took place. There may only be a certificate to record that the wedding occurred. Bonds, banns and other unique marital tools might be created. They will vary from the very informative to the barely helpful and everything in between. Be mindful of duplicate and competing marriage records that may be kept within a municipality. Two city offices may have collected marriage records during the same timeframe. 

If you are trying to determine when a couple married consider birthplace and year of their first child. Was there a newspaper announcement of the engagement? Sometimes plans change and the Episcopal wedding in the rectory is instead actually a courthouse wedding by the Justice of the Peace. A very helpful but ironic place to learn of a wedding location is the first few paragraphs of a divorce petition. Pension files are a potential resource to discover where and when a couple married. Lastly, obituaries and personal interviews can reveal wedding dates and places.

There are multiple indexes available that may assist you in your quest. Both FamilySearch and Ancestry have indexes online. These will not reveal all there is in the full record but it will point you in a certain direction for success. 

Once localities required them, death certificates are a user friendly, straight forward record to track down. There are multiple indexes available. Compliance with the law is almost universal. Apparently it was simpler to regulate and supervise a fixed number of funeral directors and cemetery offices than the inordinate number of pastors, physicians and midwives at marriages and births, especially in large urban areas.

Determining when someone died is not always simple but we will all die and our ancestors mostly have all died off by now. There may not be a death certificate before a certain year but obtain each and every one that you can because of the helpful information to be potentially found there; birthdate, birthplace, parents’ names and birthplaces, spouse’s name, marital status, cause of death, burial location and date to name but a few. 

Birth registrations may not begin in certain states until after 1900. This can be a challenge but again work with what vital records one can. Births provide the names of the parents including mother’s maiden name. The location and date of birth is standard. The ages of the parents and the birthing history of the mother may also be included on a birth record.

Be mindful of what the record keeper was asking. Number of child born to this mother and number of previous children born to this mother necessitate different replies because the former includes the subject of the birth certificate while the latter specifically ignores him. 

This record also helps to track our families social history and shows when the pregnant woman brought to bed surrounded by female friends and relatives to deliver was replaced by a delivery run by a physician and later in a hospital with physicians and nurses. Doctors are more likely than midwives to record a birth with the state. Also be mindful that delayed birth certificates can be issued for a variety of reasons. Sometimes there may be a birth certificate submitted by a midwife and then a second one submitted by the doctor. Make sure to obtain both and compare their answers. 

There will be a lot of cross referencing between records sources. Once you know where an infant was born you might have an easier time finding a baptismal record. If you are able to establish where a person is buried you may be able to find out who else from the family is buried in that grave or that same cemetery.