Civil Vital Records
by Lisa
South, Certified Genealogist
Civil vital
records are records all genealogists like to find.
These records will usually answer the who, when
and where questions you have about your ancestors.
The question you should ask is; would a civil
vital record exist and if so where would it be
located?
Occasionally you will find vital records in
your documents at home and once in a while an
original will show up in an unusual place such as
a probate packet, but when civil vital records
were officially recorded, they were done so at the
state, county or town level.
Begin your research at the state level. Each
state adopted statewide birth and death
registration at different times. The last states
to do so were Georgia and New Mexico in 1919, so
vital records will not always be available for
your earlier ancestors. There are good sites on
the internet and good reference books (for
example, Handybook for Genealogists, Published by
the Everton Publishers, Inc.) that can tell you
when each state began birth and death
registration, how and where to order the records
and what the cost will be. Marriage records began
at the state level much later than birth and
death.
If the birth, death or marriage took place
before state registration began, your next search
should be at the county court house. Birth and
death records at this level are scarce. Marriage
records, however, are available for early periods
in most areas. There are many different types of
marriage records (this will be covered in a future
issue of OGF.) Again the Handy Book for
Genealogist or some other good reference book
could tell you what records each county kept and
how to access them. The U.S. Genweb is another
good source for finding out about individual
county courthouse records. If you are searching
for a divorce record, it will usually be in the
county where the divorce was granted. Some states
do have a central filing for divorce records.
Some towns did keep vital records. These are
mostly in New England. Most of these records can
be searched at a local branch of the LDS Family
History Library through their inter-library loan
system.
As with many genealogical records, much of this
can be found is on-line, but to get a copy of the
actual document, you will probably need to check
at one of these three levels of record
repositories.
