When was birth certificates first issued

This article is designed to provide a basic understanding of U. Civil governments have created records of births, marriages, and deaths. These are the most important documents for genealogical research, but the births, marriages, and deaths of many people have never been recorded by civil authorities.

Normally a vital record is recorded at or near the time of the event. The practice of recording civil vital statistics developed slowly in the United States. Early vital information was sometimes recorded in brief entries in register books until the twentieth century, when it became more common to create certificates. Some town clerks in colonial America especially New England recorded vital information, but these records are incomplete.

The federal government has not registered vital records, except for some Americans born outside the country who were recorded in embassy or consulate records. Records of marriage were generally the first vital records kept in a locality. In most states, the counties or towns began recording marriages as soon as they were established. Whether the marriage ceremony was performed by a civil or church authority, local laws required the marriage to be recorded in civil records. Exceptions were sometimes made, however.

The local health departments of a few large cities began recording births and deaths by the mids. The early records are usually incomplete. Many counties in the East and Midwest were recording births and deaths by the late s. Each state eventually developed its own laws and created a statewide registration system. Unfortunately until the early s, these records do not exist in most states. Local offices did not always comply immediately with the registration laws.

But usually within 20 years after registration laws were enacted, most states were recording at least 90 percent of the births and deaths. New England. These states have kept good vital records. The town clerks kept register books as early as the s. Most of these states have statewide indexes of the existing records. Most New England states began statewide registration of births, marriages, and deaths between and Vermont began centralized registration in , but individual town records go back to the s.

Except for New Hampshire which began recording marriages as early as , many New England marriages in colonial times were not recorded because of the laws and religious customs of the region. It is unusual to find any vital records before for New York and for Pennsylvania, except in the larger cities. There was no federal requirement for them to do so, however, and no standard way of recording births. This was overseen at first by the Bureau of the Census.

At this point, a standard form was produced for registering births in each state, although state governments still had overall control over the issuance of birth certificates. This is still true today. During the first part of the 20th Century, the federal government took on a much greater role in collecting birth records.

These older files were only used to collect rudimentary information about the child and their parents. The issue of patchily recorded birth data would finally come to a head in World War II. At this time, ammunition factories and other defense projects were creating thousands of new jobs for citizens. However, to take advantage of this you had to be able to prove you were a US citizen. This presented a problem to around 43 million Americans who had no way of proving their citizenship status, despite being born in the USA.

Whilst news media encouraged holdouts to get registered, the demands of WWII slowed this process. Finally, in as part of a drive to improve national Health policies and the welfare state the Office of Vital Statistics became responsible for birth certificates. This would have oversight on how birth data should be recorded, whilst the states would be responsible for record-keeping as before. But when it came to public health, they lacked data. They began to pressure the U. Bureau of the Census to register all births.

New York birth certificate, Credit: The Library of Congress. And since hospital deliveries were not yet common, the system still missed a large percentage of people born at home. It also failed to do away with a worrisome problem: the risk of a child being switched or lost track of after birth. Early maternity wards did not have stringent identification policies.

The two statements conflict. Writing in , Graham estimates under-registration as 3. My own opinion is that for much of his time as Registrar General, Graham was a man working to targets that he was unable to achieve.

Once he was in a position to do better, he could revise his previous failures upwards. This tied the compulsory vaccination of all infants to their registration, and parents could be fined for non-compliance. As it was the local registrar who informed parents of their legal obligation to vaccinate their child against smallpox, parents who feared vaccination avoided the registrar.

However, even before the introduction of compulsory registration in , non-registration of births fell dramatically. Consequently, as a genealogist you can breathe a sigh of relief if a vital event occurs after — the odds are very high that you will find it. The history behind your birth certificate. When George Rose proposed a Bill to overhaul the registration system in , Hansard reports: It must, he thought, be universally allowed, that parish registers were of great importance to all ranks and classes of people from the nobleman to the peasant; and it was highly desirable they should be regularly entered, and safely deposited.

He follows this up with a plea: I have no hope of effecting the registration of all the births until the legislature arms me with the power of carrying out the intentions of the Act under the pressure of a penalty clause, which in practice would rarely or ever after the first year have to be enforced.

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