Getting started: Use your birth certificate as a starting point.

When I talk to friends and acquaintances about genealogy, they often tell me that they know nothing about their family history.  Of course that really isn’t true.  Most people know where they were born and the names of their parents.  Even if this is true for you, I highly recommend that you begin your search by taking a look at your own birth certificate.  In the United States, almost all states began using formal birth certificates around 1900.  If you don’t have a copy of this very useful document, you can get one by contacting the state in which you were born.  Use Google to search for “Texas birth certificates” substituting the name of your birth state in place of “Texas.”  You want an official, certified copy of your birth certificate, so be certain that you go to the web site that is actually run by the state in question.  So for the state of Texas, you would go to this web site. Be sure to order the most detailed version of the birth certificate that you can get since you are on a quest for information.  I caution you to watch out for rip off artists who might charge you an extra fee for something you can get yourself.  There will be a cost for a certified copy of your birth certificate.  In the case of Texas, the current cost (in 2015) is $22.00 and it can take up to two weeks before you get it in the mail.  Once you have this certified copy, it can be used for other purposes as well – things like getting a passport, getting a driver’s license, etc.

Here is an example of a birth certificate from the state of Texas in the 1950s:

Looking at your birth certificate, you will learn or confirm many interesting things.  The exact nature of these things will vary slightly from state to state and across time, but in the case of Texas, we learn the city and place in that city where I was born (Brooke Army Hospital on Fort Sam Houston).  My parents were living at 758 Marquette Drive in San Antonio.  My 36 year old father was Floyd Wendell Miller and he was a captain in the U.S. Air Force who had been born in Greeley, Colorado.  My 32 year old mother was Dorothy Elizabeth Ostegren and she was a housewife who was born in Holdrege, Nebraska.  At the time of my birth, my parents had one other child (my sister).   When my mother gave birth to me, I was the only child who was born at that date and time so I don’t have any mystery twin brothers or sisters lurking in the shadows.  The informant (i.e. the person who provided the information for this form) was my mother.  And consistent with the idea that I am not a zombie, it is reassuring to see that I was born alive!

So what can we extract from this document?  First because my dad was in the Air Force in 1952 and since the Korean War was going on at that point in time, it is likely that he was somehow involved in the Korean War.  Since he was a captain that probably means that he had been in the military for a while in order to achieve that rank.  The Korean War began on 25 June 1950 (from Wikipedia), so his rank at least suggests that he had been in the military prior to the start of the Korean War…possibly during World War II.

Next we see that my father was 36 years old when I was born in 1952, so he must have been born in about 1916 in Greeley, Colorado.  My mother was 32 years old at the time I was born, so she must have been born in 1920 in Holdrege, Nebraska.   Already we have the beginnings of a family tree with you as the root and showing at least some information about your parents.

As I mentioned earlier, most states in the United States began requiring birth certificates around 1900, so guess what?   If your parents were born in the United States, you can also get a copy of THEIR birth certificates.  So in my case, I would go to the web site for the state of Colorado and order the birth certificate for a Floyd Wendell Miller who was born in Greeley, Colorado in 1916.  For my mother I would go to the web site for the state of Nebraska and order the birth certificate for a Dorothy Elizabeth Ostegren who was born in Holdrege, Nebraska in 1920.  Once I have those birth certificates, I will probably have the names of my parents’ parents (i.e. my grandparents) and where they were born.

Now you might be thinking that this stuff is really simple since all we have to do is continue going back one generation after the next, ordering birth certificates.  Well, of course, there is a gotcha!  Birth certificates were normally NOT used in American states prior to 1900.  So once we get back to someone who was born prior to 1900, we will not be able to get a birth certificate for that person and we must have a different way to continue our research.

There is one interesting exception to the 1900 rule.  When Social Security was enacted in 1935 in the United States, people who were registering with the system or who were applying for benefits needed to be able to prove their age.  This could be done in a couple different ways, but one fairly common method was what was called a “delayed birth certificate.”  The idea behind a delayed birth certificate was that a person could get a legal birth certificate years after their actual birth if they could find someone who witnessed their birth and would then swear to that fact before a notary public.  So for example, one of my grandfathers was born in 1888 when birth certificates were not used.  But he was able to get a delayed birth certificate in the 1940s because his mother’s sister (his aunt) was a witness to his birth and swore to that fact before a notary public.

One final note about birth certificates…many states have privacy laws that prevent anyone who is not in the immediate family from getting a copy of a birth certificate.  For some states like Texas, the critical information from a birth certificate (like the names of the parents) is already in the public domain via web sites like ancestry.com.  Many years ago I happened to be in Illinois near the county where my paternal grandfather was born.  So I made a side trip to the courthouse for that county and, to my surprise, I found that they had copies of birth certificates for everyone born in that county.  I pulled down the book and had just gotten to the birth certificate for my grandfather when a courthouse worker walked in and chastised me for looking at a “forbidden” book.  The moral of that story is that you should do your homework on local laws BEFORE you go to a courthouse!