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!
