Hello eveyone, I’ve been working on adding Sources to my ancestors. I sent for a transcript of birth for some ancestors from the local county clerk. I’m not sure if these birth transcrips fall into the birth certificate category , birth registration, or if I should fill out a free form .
Thanks, Kim
I’ve got some of those, or at least it sounds like the same thing. I’m not close enough kin to get a certified (or even an uncertified) Birth Certificate for some of the people in my database. But I am allowed to get a Birth Verification.
What happens is that a clerk in the Office of Vital Records looks at an image of the actual Birth Certificate and transcribes it in their own handwriting. That handwritten transcription is what is called a Birth Verification. It’s not as good as an image of the actual Birth Certificate, but it’s way better than nothing.
I have a source template of my own design for birth records that allows me to fill a field for the type of record. For the most part, I fill the field in either as Certificate or as Index. My template already includes the word “Birth”, so I don’t have to fill that in. So for these Birth Verification records, I simply fill in the word Verification in my template and it describes the record accurately as being a Birth Verification.
Such records for your locale may or may not be called Birth Verifications, but surely they have some sort of official name. Since I don’t use RM’s source templates, I’m not quite sure how to get the word Verification (or whatever your local variation is called) into the footnote instead of the word Certificate. If you are already using an RM template for Birth Certificates, you could copy that template and in that template change the word Certificate to the word Verification (or whatever word is used for such documents in your locale). Then use that template for your Birth Transcription.
I should point out that I link images of all my Birth Certificates and Birth Verifications into RM, and that I then enter transcriptions of those documents into notes in RM. So my transcriptions of verifications are really transcriptions of transcriptions. But that’s the best I can do with the data that is available.
Hello Jerry,
Thank you , I’m thinking Ill use the free form to create this source , and fill in Birth Verification as template. Thanks for suggestion of linking images I have been working on this .
@Kidye9 and @thejerrybryan – Jerry–Thanks for explaining abt a birth verification–I has some of these on old marriages BUT didn’t know what to call it–never had a birth verification
(yet) as all the states my ancestors lived in allow you to get a birth certificate after supplying documentation-- and in some state, all you need to do is go to the state Historical society and look it up if it’s old enough…
Using the source templates provide, I used Birth Verification in the existing ones and basically, you end up with :
Footnote --Joe Small entry, Birth Verification Sheperd County Births, Liber 1: page # 433, County Clerk’s Office, Sierra, IL.
Short Footnote–Joe Small entry, Birth Verification Sheperd County Births, Liber 1, page # 433.
Bibliography—IL. USA. County Clerk’s Office, Sierra. Birth Registers.
Kimberly-- there are User Source templates at
You have to download them to view BUT some MIGHT work for you or give you ideas
The county where I was married has a lot of their probate court records online; if I pull up my marriage record, it is titled Certified Abstract of Marriage—I wonder if that would be similar in veracity “weight” as the birth verifications…
This gets more complex in England/Wales. In years gone by retrospective applications for certificates were filled in by hand on blank forms by staff at the GRO looking at the original register. Whilst they are legal certificates they are not always accurate. I had one marriage with the mother shown as Sarah Jane Gray - I spent years searching for her until I found she was actually Sarah Jane Cray.
Today consular/army births abroad are still handwritten by GRO staff but are still issued as legal certificates. Today you can download JPGs and order PDFs of the actual record at minimal cost, but although they are accurate and original they are not technically certificates.
Personally I show them all (BMDs) as certificates but attach an image of the certificate/record to the fact. I also have them on Ancestry profiles so others can verify relationships for themselves - hopefully that will reduce the number of bad associations on other trees.
I would think so-- personally- what ever title is on the document is what I would use but marriage verification would work and just add Certified Abstract of Marriage in there somewhere…