Genealogy-Geneology.net - Home
Vital Information Without Vital Registration—Birth Records
– Patricia Law Hatcher, CG, FASG
A birth certificate is the result of modern legislated vital registration. It provides us with the key elements we want for a birth record: full names of child, father, and mother (maybe with maiden name); exact place and date of birth. As our research pushes backwards in time, we learn that such records were never created. What do we do then?
Changing Mind Set To be realistic, we must restate our goals. We want to find as much "birth information" as possible, citing the best documents (plural, not singular) available. We need to be prepared to qualify what we find with weasel words (probably, possibly, perhaps) and date brackets (before, between, after).
We need to recognize that the most exact source may not be the most accurate, that we may find conflicting sources, and that we must be prepared to enter our information in a way that accommodates those realities.
Consider names, dates, and places as discrete information elements related to the birth. In a modern birth certificate one or more of those elements could be inaccurate. In 1820 Ohio it is not likely that we will find any document with all that information. We must seek them separately.
Not only do we need to look for a record substitute for a birth certificate, we may need to seek out a substitute for the birth event. Substitute birth events include pregnancy and baptism.
Now that we've restructured our thinking, let's consider the three groups most likely to have an interest in noting a vital event: family, church, and state. Their interest in the vital event—and the records created—varies considerably based on time, place, and circumstance.
Family
The first family record that comes to mind is a bible record. Bible records are not created equal. If the entry is made contemporaneous to the birth, it is more likely to be accurate than a compiled record written generations later. In other words, your documentation of a bible record should include your analysis of the handwriting (if you have a photocopy of the original), stating if the entries were made at different times or at the same time, and identifying the writer if possible.
Compiled records written by an immediate member of the family group are usually accurate. Think of where you might find such records. The desk drawer or cardboard box where important papers or personal memorabilia were saved are good places to check. Don't assume it will be in a special book or on a pretty form. My grandparents' family record—giving birth dates for their parents, siblings, children, and grandchildren—is on three sheets from a freebie notepad given out by the Holdrege [Nebraska] Seed & Farm Supply Co., headed (ironically) "SuperGene Quality Seeds." It spans over a century of births.
The family might have mailed birth announcements to family members, but you may not find a surviving announcement in the immediate family—ask cousins to check their memorabilia boxes. Baby books became popular in the twentieth century.
In modern times, the family may have sent birth announcements to the local paper. In the past, the birth of a five-legged calf might have rated newspaper ink, but not the birth of a healthy baby.
Family and friends were often informed of a birth in letters. Again, the letters usually survive with the recipient, not the sender. A sister may have noted in her diary that she received a letter mentioning the birth of her nephew. Don't limit your search to after the birth. The evidence may be in a letter from the expectant mother months before the arrival, lamenting the fact that the baby is expected to arrive at the sultry end of August.
Look for small clues in later records. Be creative. Perhaps you have a black and white photograph of gawky teenagers with a penciled "Mary age thirteen and Mark age fourteen at Lovely Lake" and a photo-developing date printed in the margin. A photo of grandmother holding a baby on her knee tells you that the baby was born before the grandmother's death.
Church Birth is not a religious event; baptism or christening is. You need to know about the beliefs of the church to which the family belonged to understand if they believed in infant baptism, and how long after the birth it normally took place. In some denominations, because of the high infant mortality rate, the baptism would be performed as soon as possible. Other denominations do not believe that whether or not a person has been baptized determines the state of his or her soul at death, hence baptisms of older infants and children were typical.
Study the baptismal records in context. Some clearly seem to be recording the date of birth; others to be recording the date of baptism (only when you are lucky do they give both). Copy the wording of the entry and any column or section headings exactly. Analyze several pages of entries. If the dates are in strict chronological order, have a pattern of dates seven days apart, or if multiple children are baptized on the same date, this suggests the dates are baptismal.
Not all church records reside with a church. In some cases, the minister may have carried his own volume in which he recorded baptisms. This was a personal, not an official, record. It may have ended up with the minister's family, or it may reside with a church in which he later preached.
There may have been a record made of the mother's "churching," although these records are rare. This service of readmitting the mother to church after a birth existed in many denominations. See users.ox.ac.uk/~mikef/church.html for more information.
In many denominations, children were confirmed and took first communion at about age thirteen or fourteen. For someone who died before the 1850 census, a confirmation record may be the best record for approximating birth year.
State Except for New England, governments haven't expressed much interest in recording births until about the second decade of the twentieth century. There was, however, a flurry of interest in collecting vital statistics in the 1860s in some states. Almost all of the legislated efforts to require registration of birth and death were discontinued (in part because of opposition from the populace), with some revivals of interest occurring in the 1890s.
Although the state might not have taken much interest in a birth, later in an individual's life they often had an intense interest in the result—a person's age. As we move further back in time, genealogists find ourselves relying more and more on statements of age to estimate birth year.
Military pensions seem most likely to provide exact dates and places of birth for early ancestors, but the information wasn't required. Muster rolls or mustering-in records sometimes list age.
As we research, our technique should be first to ask "when would this person's age have mattered or been recorded?" and then look for those records.
We might classify "age" records as:
those on which age was recorded, but not restrictive (i.e., census)
those on which age was recorded and restrictive (i.e., draft)
those on which age was not recorded, but restrictive (i.e., land sale)
Another example in the first category is depositions made in court. This often is the only age we can find in early New England and early Virginia. Be aware that these ages may be off by more than one year, perhaps rounded to the nearest five, but should be in the general time frame.
Not all age restrictions are recorded in government statutes. Many of them derive from English common law, which is the basis of much of the early legal system of both the colonial and federal periods. Unless legislation dictated otherwise, men had full rights at twenty- one, but other actions, such as witnessing documents, were accepted at earlier ages. For other actions and ages, see the table on pages 209 and 210 of Arlene H. Eakle's "Court Records" in the Revised Edition of Ancestry's "The Source."
Caveats Consider and evaluate all sources. Records closer to the event may be more accurate, although less precise. For example, an exact birth date on a tombstone may be rendered unlikely by a contemporary census entry, requiring us to say, "said to be born 13 November 1838 (tombstone), but no male under five on 1840 census, possibly born 13 November 1840."
Although the census in 1850 and 1860 named all of the individuals in a household and their ages, you cannot assume that the man and woman were married and the parents of the children. Unless you have other evidence, you'd better use a weasel word. "Probably" is getting pretty overworked (everything in genealogy seems to be "probably"), so for the census I often use "apparently." This saves face when you find that Susan was John's spinster sister, who had graciously moved in to take care of his motherless children.
Calculating birth year from a stated age in a census or a deposition gets riskier the further away you get from the event. I knew my age without a doubt when I was seventeen, but as the decades roll by, I seem to have to do the math in my head more and more when someone asks my age. I can do math in my head; I suspect most of my ancestors couldn't.
Parentage and specific place of birth are the elements we may have most difficulty establishing. This first is usually the primary—and often the most elusive—goal of genealogical research.
Other than a state given in a census or a locality from a county history (both of which have high rates of inaccuracy), we may never find a document stating the place of an individual's birth. We may need to solve the parentage in order to say "probably" for a locality, citing the place where the parents resided in the time period. Thus, we may say "born probably in Louisa County, where his father was paying taxes at the time."
Summary For any time and place, we must stop and consider what types of records would reasonably have been created by family, church, and state. Beyond that, we must consider where that same information might have been mentioned, even if it was not the primary focus of the document.
Patricia Law Hatcher, CG, FASG, is a technical writer, instructor, and professional genealogist. She has written, edited, and produced numerous publications and has written articles for The American Genealogist, The Maine Genealogist, the New Hampshire Genealogical Record, The Virginia Genealogist, and Ancestry Magazine. She is the author of Producing a Quality Family History.
(Copyright © 1998-2001, MyFamily.com Inc. and its subsidiaries.), "Ancestry Daily News" (http://www.ancestry.com/dailynews)
Surname Databases/Search Engines
Normal search engines are only part of a genealogist's arsenal when hunting for surname information. The internet is now home to large amounts of free and subscription-based surname databases and search engines.
Below is a list of some of the best free and subscription-based surname databases/search engines on the net. Just remember the rule of thumb to follow when dealing with online data is to view it with an element of suspicion until it can be properly verified. Too many people still think "if it's on the internet it must be true".
"Family Finder" is a free service provided by the makers of "Family Tree Maker" that searches hundreds of thousands of genealogy web pages. It returns matches for names found on personal home pages , name association pages, society pages, surname indexes,world family tree pedigrees, passenger records, message boards, virtual cemetaries, and civil war databases.
The following reasons are given on the "Family Finder" site as to why their search engine is better than normal search engines such as Google.com and AltaVista.com.
"Family Finder understands names.
Other search engines do not know about names. If you search for John Smith in another search engine, you will get pages that have John's and Smith's, but it might be John Jones and Mary Smith. Family Finder also handles name variants — for example, if you enter Jim Smith, it will find James Smith as well.
Family Finder knows about genealogy.
Other search engines don't stick to genealogy, they index all kinds of pages. If you search for John Smith in another search engine, you may get the John Smith who runs the insurance office down the street. Family Finder carefully selects only genealogically-relevant pages for indexing, so the relevance of the matches it returns are much higher.
Family Finder collects all the information from a Web site.
Most other search engines only look at a few pages from each Web site, just enough to get the main subject of the site. Family Finder looks at all the genealogically-relevant pages, so a name buried on a list deep in the site will still be found.
Family Finder shows the words around each match.
Other search engines just show you a summary of the top of the page. Family Finder shows you the text around the actual match, which often contains dates, locations, or a relative, and lets you immediately pinpoint which matches are relevant to your genealogy search.
Family Finder looks at other kinds of information besides Web pages.
Other search engines only look at Web pages. Family Finder also looks at GEDCOM files and text files that contain genealogy data, as well as Genealogy.com archives containing millions of historical records, and books stored at Geneology Library. Other search engines will not find information from these sources."
Click Here for instructions on how to use "Family Finder".
The Social Security Death Index
The "Social Security Death Index" is one of the most useful databases on the internet. This database contains the names of over 64 million Americans plus information such as social security numbers, birth and death dates, and last known residence.
Click Here for instructions on how to search the SSDI.
"Kindred Konnections" is a pay-for-service database that also offers a way to access the database for free. In exchange for extracting names and dates from original source documents, you get one hour in the subscription-based area of the web site. During your one free hour you can access millions of marriage, birth, death, and census records. They also have a 56 million name pedigree-linked archive. You are allowed to build up an unlimited amount of free hours which can be used immediately or saved for a future date.
Click Here to obtain an account number and password. You can select whether you want a paid or free subscription at the beginning of the form.
Sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints , "Family Search" is one of the most popular geneology sites on the internet. From this site you can search millions of family records from a variety of sources including the Ancestral File , the International Genealogical Index, the Pedigree Resource File and websites.
The Ancestral File
The Ancestral File is a compilation of genealogies submitted by people worldwide to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. This file contains over 35 million names and provides contact information for the person who submitted the information.
International Genealogical Index
The International Genealogical Index (IGI) lists the dates and places of births, christening and marriages for more than 285 million deceased people. Names were extracted from original records from the early 1500s to the early 1900's.
The Pedigree Resource File
A database of compiled pedigrees submitted by users via the online "Family Search" Internet Genealogy Service, or gathered from printed histories and other sources.
"Family Search" is easy to use for beginners. Once you arrive at the site click on "Help" on the top right corner of the site for instructions on how to use the search features.
This is a searchable list or registry of over one million surnames from around the world. Associated with each surname are dates and locations and the contact information of the person who submitted the information. You can search the RSL by surname or look through the monthly update section for new additions.
Once you arrive at the site scroll down until you see the heading "Search the RootsWeb Surname List".
From there simply type your surname into the "Surname" search field and click "Submit".
You will then be presented with a table of results. You will see the headings "From", "To", "Migration", and "Submitter".
The "From" and "To" columns contain dates. These dates tell you that the person researching your surname has information that covers those dates.
The "Migration" column shows a submitters info about the areas the family lived in.
By clicking on the names in the "Submitter" column you can obtain the email address of the person who submitted the information.
Click Here to browse the Rootsweb Helpdesk.
Ancestry.com is a subscription-based geneology site. For a monthly fee you can search a multitude of records including census indexes and marriage records. Ancestry.com also has a free-to-use surname search service called World Tree. The World Tree database contains over 75 million names that are contained in GEDCOMS.
This database includes over 1.7 million records from over three thousand cemeteries worldwide.
Click Here for tips on searching this database.
Surname Web provides a searchable registry from which you can perform a surname search through over three billion genealogy records and over one hundred thousand geneology web sites.
Simply enter your surname into the search field at the top of the page and click "Search".
One of the largest geneology databases on the net, the World Connect Project currently contains over fifty six million names in over one million databases that can all be searched free of charge. You can also submit your own family tree information in GEDCOM format for free.
Simply enter your surname into the "World Connect" search field and click search. You will then be presented with a list of all the GEDCOMs that contain your surname. You can further refine your search by entering first name, place of birth or death.
You will also find the email address of the person who submitted the GEDCOM, so you can contact them directly.
Another great feature of "World Connect" is the electronic "post-em" note. You can leave a "post-em" note so other researchers will see you are researching that family.
Click Here for further help on using World Connect.
A daily index of published obituaries worldwide. This index grows by about 2,500 entries per day and goes back to 1995.