The Family Historian

March 2008

Mary Alice Dell

 

 

Finding the Vitals – the Foundation of Family History

 

The anger that many Americans felt on the morning of Sept 11, 2001 was an emotional replay to many of us who had been shocked at the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor some sixty years earlier.  As a child, my emotional response was more a reaction to that of my parents, as radio broadcasts did not have the impact that television coverage does on today’s children.  The real affect on me was my father’s six-month struggle to join the U.S. Navy, and his eventual success.  On Dec 7, 1941 Dad had just turned 44, past the age when most men enlisted or were drafted. He had missed serving in WW I and was determined to serve his country.  Although the Navy was eager to recruit him, as they needed experienced cooks and Dad was a professional chef, his first hurdle was proving he was under age 45.  He was born in 1897 in Letcher Co. deep in the Appalachian Mountain area of SE Kentucky.  He had no birth certificate, no family Bible, or written record of his birth.  No one had ever challenged him before to prove his birth date. The Navy wanted a birth certificate.

 

The County Clerk agreed to accept a notarized statement from his Mother as to the date of his birth.  I remember the shouting match between Dad and my grandmother as to the correct year of his birth..  “Maw” argued she was there and ought to know what year he was born!  She finally won as she wouldn’t sign the statement making him a year younger than his true age.  A delayed birth certificate was filed at the Court House in Portsmouth, Ohio.   Had I not known that story, I would have never thought to look in Ohio for a copy of my father’s birth certificate. A delayed birth registration was often filed where the person lived at the time, not where he was born. 

 

The When and Where are Vital to the Who

 

Vital records are called vitals, not because of their importance to genealogists, but because they deal with the essentials of a person’s existence, his birth and death.   The other defining event of one’s life, marriage, often is categorized as a vital record. 

 

Vital records define the life span of a person and help genealogists identify that person in records and place him in the proper historical context and location.  They are the basis upon which we build the biographical sketch of each ancestor, giving us the details of the person’s life events and often the names and vital information of their parents. They can forge that link between generations which is necessary to assure you are claiming the right ancestors. 

 

Dad’s story of proving his birth has been a familiar one to many Americans who were born before state or county registration was mandated, and needed to prove their birth date in order to receive Social Security benefits or prove their parentage for legal reasons.   Census records, city directories, or the birth places of other children can help locate where a person was living at the time of a delayed filing.  

 

State registration of births and deaths did not begin in most states until the early 1900’s, Most counties kept marriage records from the time they were formed;  most did not keep other vitals until after the Civil War, or until the state required it.  New England states are the exception as their records go back into the 1600’s.  Books, such as Redbook and The Handybook for Genealogist (both in Boerne Public Library) list the dates each county and state began keeping vital records. You can also learn the date a state began vital record registration by searching the Internet for a state’s vital record office using Google.

 

The Social Security Death Index lists the names, birth, and death dates of those who died after 1962 who were receiving Social Security benefits and whose death was reported to the agency.  Also listed are the address where the last payment was made and the state where the SS card was issued.  The SSDI can be found on line at free sites RootsWeb.com and familysearch.org.  You can download a letter that can be sent to the SS for a copy of the deceased’s application for a card. 

 

Who has the old Family Bible?

 

Before 1900 we may have to look to other sources for the vitals.  Bible and church records are among the first to search.  Locating the old family Bible which may have passed down several generations of daughters and granddaughters is not always easy.  I have the 126 year old Bible which Ellis Mann and Mary Ella Pierce started after their marriage in 1882.  It has passed down four generations though females and has information on all their Mann children, grandchildren (Manns and Willis), their great granddaughter (Newsom), their 3 great-great granddaughters (Dells) and 6 three-greats grandchildren with surnames of Sims, Jacobson, and Lippert.  One of these will ultimately inherit the Mann Bible. Who would think of looking for a Mann Bible in a Lippert household?  If you are copying a family Bible (digital cameras are great for that), be sure to copy the pages giving the title and the date the Bible was printed.  That is important to validate the entries.

 

If your family was Catholic or early Lutheran, your chances of finding vital church records are pretty good.  Christening and burial records do not exist for many Protestant denominations. Early ones are usually archived at the church’s national headquarters.  Consult the church reference books in the genealogy room at the Library for locations of these archives.

 

Tombstones or cemetery records published by those who have walked cemeteries recording names and dates are good sources.  [If you are taking pictures in a cemetery, please do not put anything other than water on the tombstones.   Anything else, even if you wash it off, will aid the deterioration of the stone.]  Funeral homes and monument companies have early burial records that give locations of graves and death dates, useful when tombstones are missing or too weathered to read.   

 

Census records taken after 1850 will give the year of birth and place for each person. That information is only as reliable as the person who gave it, or the census taker who recorded it. Although you are safe most of the time in assuming the man and woman are the parents of all the children of the same surname listed in a household in the 1850 through 1870 census, it is not proof.  The 1880 census and those thereafter list the relationship of each person to the head of household.   Don’t be surprised if the year of birth is inconsistent.  Keeping track of your age was not important once you reached legal age.

 

I found the birth date and place of my great-grandfather George W. Newsom, born in 1841,  in a Confederate pension application sitting on top of a file cabinet in the County Clerk’s office in Lawrence County KY.  Some of the other places you may find vital information is in World War I draft registrations, naturalization records, school records, newspapers, and  legal cases of all kinds.  Don’t forget to look at home for letters, certificates, insurance policies, dates on photos etc.   If Dad had been a genealogist, he could have avoided the argument with Maw.