More of a community consensus question. I am beginning to enter delayed birth certificate citations. For a 1913 birth with a certificate that was issued in 1941, would the “event date” be the date of the birth or the date the certificate was issued?
Also, would you consider the delayed birth certificate as a “primary” source, as it is the first birth certificate, generated by a person with “personal knowledge”, or would you consider it 2ndary as it was not generated at the time of the birth and supporting documentation used may have been a church baptism record?
Was the person with personal knowledge someone who actually witnessed the birth? If so, it is primary information. If the person was just told about the birth (and this includes the person being born) then it is secondary information.
A lot of delayed birth certificates were issued around this time because people needed one to get into the Social Security system and never had an actual birth certificate.
The person relaying the information was the mother, so yes, she was there, even though other doucmentation proves the information provided was not accurate.
What about my other question? Would you list the event date in the citation details (not in the fact) as the date the certificate was issued or the reported birth date? I am leaning towards the date the certificate was issued, as that is the event I am citing to support the “fact” of the birth.
In my opinion, event date would be when the certificate was issued
Just saying, you have to be very careful of the accuracy of other documentation vs what a Mom says-- for example Mom-in-law was born Aug 13-- finally saw her birth info from the state–it says she was born Aug 15-- she was born at home so someone had to go to the office to record her birth–so the question is Dad give them the wrong date , did the recorder put down the wrong date or was Mom-in-law wrong?
Another example 2nd g-grandma and her son-- she was born 1835 and he was born 1857–1st couple of census she was in and the immigration records show she was born 1835-- after that, both her and her son keep getting younger-- to the point that the 1900 census says she was born in 1855 and his death certificate says he was born in 1870–when in doubt, I always go with the earliest known documentation…
Thanks! I have settled on using the date the certificate was created as my event date. My father actually has two delayed birth certificates each with different information so using the event date to be the date the certificate was created seemed to make the most sense to me.