Ancestry Magazine

Vital records access for family historians is growing ever more difficult and it’s not likely to change. Here’s why.

Vital records—the certificates recorded in local or state vital statistics offices—have traditionally been the first original records sought by newcomers to family history once they have exhausted home sources and the recollections of living relatives. Unfortunately, access to these records is becoming more and more restricted at the very time when they have become most significant for family history.

Vital records are the single most reliable source for information about the key events in the lives of our ancestors—the events that earlier were only recorded, if at all, in family Bibles or church records. Parents and children of people named in vital records can usually still obtain them, but access is becoming ever more restricted in response to growing concerns over privacy and identity theft.

Vital records are the government-required registrations of births, deaths, marriages, divorc es, and adoption name changes. In countries where civil government offices were established to keep records that earlier were the responsibility of state churches, they are known as civil registrations.

Most vital or civil registration records contain sufficient individual information, such as names, ages, and birthplaces of parents, to distinguish a record from those of others with the same name. However, they contain nothing that identifies the record positively with any particular person—no photograph, fingerprint, DNA profile, list of identifying marks, or other characteristics. This is ironic in view of the widespread acceptance of a birth certificate as evidence that the person holding it is the person named in it! In fact, birth certificates have no identifying value whatsoever, yet their misuse as a means of identification has been one of the principal justifications recently cited for limiting their availability.

Like other records we use for genealogical research, the content of vital and civil records will vary with both the jurisdiction and the period in which it originated. The discussion here focuses on U.S. records and their development. Similar trends are found in other jurisdictions, but the specifics will need to be sought out for particular localities and periods of interest.

Before we look at vital records in detail, it is important to understand the two different meanings for the word “certificate.” It is used first for the original certification that an event took place—the signed certificate of an attending physician or midwife, funeral director, or an officiating church or judicial officer that is filed in the registration office. “Certificate” in its second sense is used for the certified copies of original registrations, which are issued by the vital records registrar on payment of a fee.

More accurately, these are certificates of registration and of the authenticity of the copy or abstract , not of the event itself. In the recent past, the certificates issued by registration officers have usually been in the form of a photocopy of all or part of the original, with the registrar’s certificate of authenticity and seal appended. Earlier, they were typed or handwritten transcriptions from the original, certified and sealed.

In the future, as electronic filing becomes the norm, there will be no typed or signed originals, and we can expect the certified copies to be in the form of computer-generated forms, authenticated by the registrar’s certificate and seal. Only the original certificate on file in the registration office will be an original record. The certificates issued by the office, although they contain primary information and are acceptable as evidence of the original, will be considered derivative records, not original.

Like so many other records useful in family history, vital records did not originate with genealogy in mind. In the United States, vital registration began in Massachusetts in 1639, followed soon thereafter by the other New England colonies. In the rest of the country, vital registration didn’t begin until the nineteenth century, when a number of cities began to require death and later birth registration, a movement led by physicians interested in public health. New York City was the first to require death registrations beginning in 1803. Emphasis was on reporting circumstances and cause of death, and insuring sanitary disposition of remains.

A national system of vital registration (although still conducted by the individual states) did not exist until the first half of the twentieth century. In Europe, civil registration began in the mid- to late-nineteenth century, as new centralized national governments sought to learn the makeup of their often far-flung and fragmented domains without being dependent on church officials to keep the records.

National Registration Areas
Physicians associated with the U.S. Bureau of the Census began collecting health-related data with the 1850 population census and proposed that the states collect data on a current basis to update the periodic census snapshots of public health. The first step toward building a national system while relying on the individual states to do the registering began in 1880, when the Census Bureau established the “National Death Registration Area.”

To be admitted to the Registration Area, a state or city had to have a workable law requiring collection of death data, and achieve a ninety percent compliance level. The registration area started off with the states of Massachusetts and New Jersey, the District of Columbia, and nineteen cities. By 1900, it had expanded to include ten states—the six New England states of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine, together with New York, New Jersey, Michigan, Indiana, and the District of Columbia. Five more states were added by 1906—Colorado, California, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and South Dakota.

Acceptance of the need for birth registrations came more slowly as the immediate association with public health was not as apparent to the public or to legislators as were the causes and circumstances of death. Although a National Birth Registration Area had been proposed earlier, it was not established until 1915 and initially included only ten states and the District of Columbia. It was not until 1933 that all of the states were admitted to both the death and birth registration areas.

Bringing states into the Marriage Registration Area, established in 1957, and one for Divorce, in 1958, proved even more difficult. When national collection of detailed marriage and divorce data was halted in 1996 for budgetary reasons, only forty-one states had joined the Marriage Area, and thirty-one had joined the Divorce Area. The participating states still collect detailed information on the standard certificate forms, but they now send only summary data to the federal government. Many states also have a second series of marriage records maintained by marriage license offices.

Standard Certificates and Model Laws
In 1900, the Census Bureau recommended standard certificates for birth and death registration for each state to use, and with input from a number of interested private health-related organizations, published a model state registration law that each state could enact. Since then, the certificates and model laws have been revised periodically by a succession of federal agencies responsible for collecting health statistics, currently the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the Department of Health and Human Services.

The periodic revisions reflect the growing importance of statistical data for public health. The standard birth and death certificate forms now in use were promulgated in 1989; new versions were approved late in 2003 and have been recommended to the states for adoption. The current edition of the recommended state legislation, Model State Vital Statistics Law and Regulations (1995), replaced a 1977 edition. It is the source for the longer closure periods—100 years for births and fifty years for deaths and marriages—that a number of states have recently enacted, making research into the recent past difficult for family historians. Genealogical community representatives were on the working group that developed the 1995 edition, but their recommendations on public access were completely rejected.

Birth Certificates
Elements common to birth registrations worldwide are the name of the child, the date and place of birth, the names of the parents when known, and the name of the person filing the information. Beyond that minimum, there may be nothin g else, or there may be a considerable body of useful genealogical information.

Some of the health data on earlier certificates is useful in determining family structure and interpreting census records—information like number of previous pregnancies, live births, and living children.

Less useful genealogically, but perhaps useful for indicating the level of health care available to the family, would be information on the preventive treatment administered to prevent neonatal blindness. Starting with the 1949 standard certificate, such information, with many additional questions, has been relegated to a lower section of the certificate, “for health and medical use only,” and labeled “confidential” in later revisions. It is not reproduced in the photocopies certified and issued to applicants.

The 1989 revision now used in most states is two pages long and revised to include a lengthy list of maternal and infant risk factors in the confidential health section. That data is combined with death certificate data for all infants who die before age one, using new data items added to the 1989 death certificate form, to produce the Linked Birth and Infant Death (LBID) database. Through it, causes of infant death can be associated with the risk factors present during pregnancy or at birth.

The latest (2003) birth certificate revision reduces to the top quarter of the first page the essential elements of name, date, time and place of birth, parents’ names, city or town or residence, and state of birth. These are the familiar elements we have come to look for on issued certificates of birth registration.

A new administrative section, to be kept confidential like the health information on the rest of the page and the one following, includes the mother’s mailing address, social security numbers of both parents, whether a number has been requested for the child, and whether the mother was married at any time dur ing the pregnancy, and if not, whether the father had signed an acknowledgment of paternity at the hospital. The confidential health information section also includes information about both parents’ education, and some new questions related to health risks.

Death Certificates
In U.S. death certificates, we can expect to find the name of the decedent; date, place and time of death; age and/or date of birth; place of birth; occupation; names (with mother’s maiden name asked for) and sometimes places of birth of both parents; and until recently, cause of death. Certificates from other countries typically have less information, often omitting names of parents. Names of spouses are found in U.S. certificates except on the 1949 and 1956 standard certificate forms. Early certificates, especially in those cities that pioneered death registration, often indicated how long the individual was a resident in the city.

Two major changes in the standard death certificate have taken place over the years. The first, starting in 1949, dropped entries for parents’ places of birth—often reported erroneously, but beloved by family historians for their occasional value. These, and usually the still-included names of parents, are examples of secondary information in an original source document, mixed in with the primary information about the circumstances and causes of death.

The other major change came with the 1989 revision, which relegated all the information on cause of death to a lower section of the certificate page, so that it could be omitted from photocopied certificates issued in those states that treat cause of death as confidential health information. In earlier years, late-term stillbirths were reported through a birth and death certificate, or later through an entry on the birth certificate. Since 1930, separate certificates have been used for reporting live births and fetal deaths. The 2003 revised standard d eath certificate remains only one page in length, but the detailed instructions on how to complete it have been expanded from one to three pages.

Marriage Certificates
The typical information found on marriage certificates includes the names, addresses, ages and occupations of the parties; their places of birth and current addresses; and the names and birthplaces of their parents, together with the officiating cleric, judge or other officer and two or three witnesses.

Divorce Certificates
In most jurisdictions, the official divorce record must be obtained from the court that issued it. The standard certificate of divorce is used by the courts to notify the state vital statistics office for its statistical analysis, and before 1996 for reporting to the National Center for Health Statistics. Certified copies, however, may not be available from the vital statistics office.

Future Availability of Vital Records
Family history research as we have come to know it will be vastly changed if current trends continue on closing records outright, or imposing long restricted periods before public access is allowed. The Federation of Genealogical Societies and the National Genealogical Society have a joint Records Preservation and Access Committee, with representation from other major genealogical organizations, which is addressing the issue.

Further information is available on the FGS website as the committee continues to monitor developments in this area and on threatened loss or destruction of records, enabling family historians to join in appropriate actions to prevent further access restrictions or record losses.

Donn Devine, CGSM, CGISM, a genealogical consultant from Wilmington, Delaware, is an attorney for the city and archivist of the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington. He is a former National Genealogical Society board member, currently chairs its Standards Committee, and is a trustee of the Board for Certification of Genealogists®.