How to Find Free Vital Records
Researching Vital Statistics
When you learn how to find free vital records, this assists you in any kind of ancestry research you do. Those who were adopted can learn about their biological parents and their separated siblings, or half-brothers and half-sisters. Of course, you might be wondering what the heck “vital records” are.
What Are Vital Records?
Vital records are records kept about the red letter days or moments in your life. The original meaning of “vital” was from the Latin word “vita”, meaning “life”. So vital records originally meant records of your birth and your death.
That definition has expanded over time to mean other things, specifically documents having to do with other major life events, such as getting married, or just the opposite. Below are the four major vital statistics we’ll be talking about today.
- Birth Certificate
- Death Certificate
- Marriage License
- Divorce Documents
These are the defining moments of most peoples’ lives, so they are your vital records. Since these records are the lynchpins in most ancestral studies, these (along with military service and immigration records) are often how you learn about your genealogy and ancestral family tree. So here’s how to find your free vital records.
Search for Death Certificates
Because death records are easier to access than birth records, we’ll start there. Go to the “Social Security Death Index” or SSDI for information on death records, at least for those Americans who’ve died in the past half-century.
The SSDI records should give you the full name, birthdate, birth month, day of death and Social Security number of the people you’re searching for.
Search State Archives
Go to state vital records archives to learn about birth certificates, marriage certificates and divorce proceedings. A court is going to have handled these affairs at one time or another, and most state vital records offices keep a site with this information posted.
It’s going to be easier to get birth information on people no longer living, because certain birth information is sealed. At the same time, most states are quite good about collecting and displaying vital statistics.
Search the County Records
If you can’t find marriage and divorce listings at the state level, consider finding that information on the county websites. Learn which county the marriage or divorce was made official, then search the county site.
Once again, not every county is going to post this information online. Most do these days. If you can’t find that information, get the phone number, fax number and physical address of the same archives or offices. Then contact the office and learn what procedures they have for you to collect vital records information.
Free Vital Records
In almost all cases, vital records are part of public information. There’s almost never a reason for you to pay a vital records website for access to this information, unless they do all the work for you and you’re willing to pay for convenience. Learn how to find free vital records on your own and never pay for the privilege.
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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 11th, 2010 at 6:24 pm and is filed under Birth Records, Genealogical Records, Public Records, Vital Records. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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[...] How to Find Free Vital Records How to Find Your Civil War Ancestors How to Get a Free Criminal Background Check All About Criminal Background Checks How to Investigate a Small Business How to Find a Birth Certificate [...]
[...] How to Find Free Vital Records How to Find Your Civil War Ancestors How to Get a Free Criminal Background Check All About Criminal Background Checks How to Investigate a Small Business How to Find a Birth Certificate [...]