United States Birth Records

Birth Records
Birth records generally give the child's name, sex, date and place of birth, and the names of the parents. Records of the twentieth century provide additional details, such as the name of the hospital, birthplace of parents, occupation of the parents, marital status of the mother, and the number of other children born to the mother.

If no record was filed at the time of an individual's birth, he may have arranged for a delayed registration of birth by showing proof of his birth as recorded in a Bible, school, census, or church record, or by testimony from a person who witnessed the birth. These registrations generally start in 1937, yet the birth may have occurred many years earlier. The registration is usually in the state where the birth occurred. The Family History Library has acquired copies of many delayed certificates, especially for the midwestern states.

A corrected record of a birth may be filed if a name was changed or added. Most corrections require affidavits of eyewitnesses or evidence from other official records. The library has microfilm copies of a few of these records.

= Places to look for Birth Records =


 * State Archives
 * City and County civil registrations
 * Chruch records of births and christenings
 * Online records sites like Ancestry, Footnote, World Vital Records, Heritage Quest...
 * FamilySearch in the Advanced Search, Records Search, and Historic Books
 * Newspapers often listed new births
 * Family Bibles and personal histories
 * Obituraries often give birth information
 * Census records sometimes give ages and in some records tell the month and year of birth
 * Death records often contain birth information
 * Tombstones usually give birth and death dates
 * Submitted genealogies posted by others
 * Google and other web site search sites, and don't forget to search Google Books