New Beginnings..

It is nearly spring...

A time for new beginnings...

And a great time for babies!

A co-worker recently became a father for the second time - Congratulations, Dan & Katie!

This event inspired me to write about all the different ways we document the birth of a new child.

And of course, this means these are ALL the different resources we should be looking for...

1. Early pregnancy test - Okay. This one is gross! I know, because my daughters told me so. But I actually saved the EPT stick from my second daughter. BTW, the color fades over the years. The "ick' factor can be eliminated by taking a picture of the test. Don't expect to find may of these.
2. Gender reveal party - This is a relatively recent phenomenon, but it is possible that it is documented with invitations, photos, and a guest book.
3. Ultrasound scans - Now, ultrasound scans are routine and expectant parents get copies to take home and share. First photo of baby? Probably an ultrasound.

4. Baby Showers - usually given shortly before the baby arrives, this tradition developed to help new parents defray the costs that come with a new baby. Invitations, pictures, guest books and possibly...

5. Baby books - Usually one of the gifts received at a baby shower, a Baby Book is an album just to document every moment of the young human's life. First food - listed. First BM -noted. Also includes a basic ancestry chart. Aunt Bonnie used to create quilted masterpieces.

Aunt Bonnie's quilted baby books are treasured heirlooms in our family.

6. Hospital pictures - These first photos are taken in the nursery in the hospital. Usually, you can purchase pre-printed birth announcements designed to hold these miniature photos.

Baby bracelet like the one pictured to below were used in the 1950's & 60's to make sure that mother & baby were correctly matched up when it came time to leave the hospital.

7. Hospital announcements - sometimes part of the "birthing" package at the hospital are paper birth announcements to send out to friends and family. Most hospital have moved to online pictures and announcements. Because of HIPAA and privacy concerns, most also require a password to access.

8. Mother's Certificate - a decorative birth certificate from the hospital. It is not an official government document and cannot be used in lieu of the official birth record. (see below)

While not official documents, Mother's Certificates can contain
information not found on the official birth certificate.

Did you know that footprints are also unique to the individual and can be used for identification?

9. Birth announcements - Commercial cards purchased and sent out by the parents.
10. Newspaper birth announcements - Aren't seen too often anymore, but local births used to be regularly published in the newspapers.

Birth announcements from a 1979 Peru, Indiana newspaper.
Privacy concerns have mostly eliminated such listings.

11. Birth record - The OFFICIAL birth record from the local government. In Ohio, it is registered with the local health department and the State Department of Vital Statistics. Did you know you can obtain a birth record for anyone born in Ohio after 1908 at your local health department? To learn more about how to do that, check out this BLOG POST.

12. Social Security Number - This should NOT be available for any living person. But you can often find a listing for deceased persons in the Social Security Death Index that is available on Ancestry Library Edition and FamilySearch.org.
13. Baptism/christening - These are ceremonial rituals of different religions. If the information is not in the family documents, you have to contact the church or parish where the ritual took place. 

Baptism records don't always give the date of birth, as this one does.
But prior to the government's requirement for official birth records, a
baptism record may be the closest you can find to a birth record.

14. Family Bibles - A family Bible that records all the births, deaths and marriages is a rare heirloom indeed. BUT, if all the handwriting is with the same pen and penmanship, it means it was filled out by one individual and probably not filled out at the time of the event. Then you are relying on the memory and accuracy of that one person.

These births were obviously all written at the same time by the same person.
IF that person was the mother, she would have first hand knowledge of the births.
But does she remember all the dates correctly?

Birth of  the first, second, or last child spurs some people's interest in researching their family's history; picturing sharing it with their children one day...

Babies are such a nice way to start people.  - American humorist, Don Herold.

An Adventure in Researching Birth Records

At the beginning of the year, I mentioned that one of my goals for 2016 was to work on my MASON family surname. And one of the first items on my "to-do" list for the MASONS research was to organize the information. This is a great way to discover what information is missing.

After organizing my files, I quickly discovered that a LOT of documentation was missing for some of my closest relatives. The birth, marriage & death dates were listed. But no documentation. This was because I couldn't afford the price of obtaining the documents for collateral lines, cousins, aunts and uncles. Until more recently.

No, I did not get a huge raise at the library, win the lottery, or inherit a fortune. It is just that a lot more information is more available. Ancestry Library Edition and FamilySearch.org helped fill in some of the gaps. But some of the information was too recent to be available online, for privacy reasons. Specifically, I was looking for the birth certificates for my mother's siblings; two brothers and one sister.


Luckily, here in Ohio you can obtain birth certificates for anyone born in Ohio after 1908 from your local health department. A certified copy costs $22. But, if you don't need a certified copy, and I didn't, you can request to see the certificate and then take a picture of it!

Example of a certified birth certificate.

Example of an "uncertified" Ohio birth certificate.

Look at all the information that is left off the certified copy!

So armed with their three names, dates of birth, places of birth and their parents names, I headed over to the Medina County Health Department on Ledgewood Drive (right next to WalMart).

Medina County Health Department, 4800 Ledgewood Drive, Medina.

The clerks in the Vital Statistics division of the Health Department are always very friendly and helpful. When you fill out the paperwork to request to see the copy of a birth certificate, write "For Genealogical Purposes" across the top. The clerks then know to not make a certified copy, but to just print it out. In Medina, they stamp "View Only" across the copy.

However, they could only find one of the birth certificates. The one for my Mom's younger brother, Charlie. They couldn't find the certificates for John Jr. nor Dixie. After their mother died, Dixie had been adopted by a family named Roberts. The clerk said I would have to know the adoptive mother's name to find her certificate. But John?  Why wasn't his certificate showing?

In certain places and times, compliance with the law to register births wasn't consistently followed. But during the 1930's compliance in Ohio was pretty complete, even in the cases of home births. Both my mother and Uncle Charlie had been born at home.

Elated at having at least one of the certificates, I went home to review my files to see if there was a piece of information missing that might help locate Uncle John's birth certificate. In all of the siblings' files was a printout from Ancestry Library Edition for the Ohio birth indexes. Uncle John's printout listed a file number. I checked Uncle Charlie's printout with the picture of the certificate and noticed the certificate number and file number were nearly identical!

Now armed with the certificate number, I made another trip to the Health Department. BINGO! They easily found Uncle John's certificate. Perplexed as to why it did not show up during the first search, the clerk looked in the index and found that he was indexed under the name Raymond Sherwood Mason, instead of John Sherwood Mason, Jr.!  Bizarre!

If not for the persistence of the clerk and myself, and using multiple sources, we wouldn't have found it!

Oh, and the clerk promised to fix the index.