How you obtain a birth certificate can vary depending on the state

Socks -- some states have digital images of birth and/or death certificates online. Many states allow folks to order copies of birth and/or death certificates through VitalChek.

Depending on the year and place of birth, a birth certificate may not even exist, as each state has a date upon which birth and death certificates began to be required. Prior to those dates, it was the churches and perhaps the counties that kept those records.

Don't tell us the date or city of your grandmother's birth, but can you please tell us the state? Then we should be able to tell you if a certificate is available online or if at all.

You will gain new understanding of your family members...and history. That's what's most interesting to me -- not just compiling names and dates on a 'tree'. There were so many things 'not said' in previous generations. When you start to fill in the backgrounds, you can start to see who these people were and often why they did what they did.

There are even repeating patterns and talents in some families. My family has a lot of teachers, as far back as the 1600's in NE France. Three men were skilled locksmiths and inventors of locks -- men generations apart, who never knew about one another.

Chisue, I so agree. Just accumulating names and dates isn't that interesting but it does get interesting when you can get other information from documents. For example one of my relatives was a "liveryman," something we don't even have anymore. That information was on a death certificate.

The fact that two of my grandparents don't even have headstones is interesting as well. Perhaps there was no money, or perhaps there was discord in the family. I thought about purchasing headstones but decided that no headstones is part of family history too.

Lindsey, it's Indiana. I have no city but do have DOB.

My research goes back to the 19th century so this may not help. However, I was able to get very close dates by contacting the churches (Catholic) where ancestors were baptized. At that time children were baptized very shortly after birth, so for all practical purposes it was the date of birth.

I also discovered that my "orphan" grandmother was a child born out of wedlock. Lots of interesting things turn up when one starts chasing the past.

Socks -- If the year of birth in Indiana is before 1907, you need to contact the Marion County Vital Records office at 317-221-2000. If the year of birth is 1907 or later, you can order a certified copy online via either VitalChek or the Indiana Dept. of Technology. The links on the State of Indiana web site for both (and also for further information) is THIS.

The Vital Records page on the Indiana web site says this about birth records: "Birth records in the ISDH Vital Records office begin with October 1907. Prior to October 1907, records of birth are filed only with the local health department in the county where the birth occurred."

wow, Lindsey, thank you!! I appreciate your helpfulness very much!

Oh yes, Seniorgal. The tidbits that can be picked out are what is interesting. I'm impressed at how far you have been able to go back. Very good.

We discovered that our grandmother divorced her DH of over 30 years and in the very next month married a man 16 years her junior! Grandma!!

I have one line that was very wild. They made the newspapers because of their crimes. I've known roughly where one individual was buried since I was a kid, but until I started my research we didn't know of his other family and they didn't know where he was. Um, that's right. There is a previous wife with at least one child. Not sure if they ever divorced or my grandfather knew he had at least one half sister out there. The people I need to talk to are gone. There is a family reunion this summer so I will ask some extended family if they knew.

Another very helpful source for me was local newspapers. The obituaries were often full of information. My librarian told me she was surprised at how few people used them. I was able to order the microfilm from the state historical society. They were mailed to my library where I could read them on the microfilm reader. Not only were they informative but sometimes very funny in light of today's world. One thing I stumbled on was the obituary of my great-great grandmother long after I had supposed was her date of death. She was the one who, in 1850, at age 55 or, more likely, 60, brought the "orphan" to this country from Ireland.

Thanks for the vote of confidence, Socks, but although I volunteer as a photographer of gravestones, I'm not a good person to ask when it comes to finding things out about ancestors. Everything I know about genealogical research I learned from Lindsey. :-)

Glad you got some good advice here!

Have you looked for her on all the free sites? I would start with familysearch. Have you looked on findagrave? Maybe someone else in the family has posted flowers or the photo or even an obit. Sometimes connecting with other family will produce the document you are looking for. Otherwise the cheapest most direct source would be the state. Does google know where she died? Also, message boards everywhere. Free usually takes more of your time and effort. Pay per view is usually quicker and less painful.

Yes, it is addictive. I've now located family homesteads in New England and Ohio, discovered that my ancestors helped found and start towns in Rhode Island, and found that a 9xGreat Grandmother was hanged as a witch in Salem, Mass.

Some states have a wealth of documentation available on line; birth, death, burial, marriage records and newspaper articals. Others, not so much. As you develop your family tree, genealogy websites like Ancestry, MyHeritage, etc can also connect you with others with whose family trees you share branches.

Lindsey, the Marion County phone number is for Marion County only. Nice people on the phone though. Amazingly, people answer the phone.

As you said, the older birth records, in this case before 1907, are kept in the jurisdictions where they took place. I'm just not sure what town she was born in.

Do you think ancestry.com could be helpful?

PS I have her SS number. Could I enter that on a SS search webpage? Is that a good idea?

Socks -- send me an e-mail through the link on my page here on Houzz. Give me what information you have -- name at birth, date of birth, her parents' names if you know them, and her SS number. I will see what info I can find for you.

The Social Security Death Index is free to search, and has records from 1935 through 2014. BUT, it only lists folks for whom a claim was made for death benefits, and folks for whom the SSA was notified of their death. For example, my mother died at the end of July 1970. Although she had a SS number, she cannot be found on the SS Death Index because she was not collecting SS benefits (she was 53 when she died), and my father didn't put in a claim for SS death benefits. My father died at the beginning of September 1970 (at the age of 56). He is listed on the SS Death Index, because my younger sister and brother received SS survivor benefits.

Ancestry has another, related, database -- the U.S., Social Security Application and Claims Index, 1936-2007, which (quoting from Ancestry) "...picks up where the SSDI leaves off, with details such as birth date and parents’ names extracted from information filed with the Social Security Administration through the application or claims process." People can often be found on this Index even though they're not found on the SSDI.

Gosh, Lindsey -- You lost both parents, so close together!

Lindsey, I don't see "MESSAGE" on your page.

ChiSue - Yes, my parents died a month and three days apart. And my 21st birthday was right in between... Of course, we didn't know at the time that my father would die soon after my birthday, but my mother's birthday was the day after my birthday, and all my life we had celebrated our birthdays together. Turning 21 is normally a very special day, but it was the worst birthday in my entire life.

Socks --- ack! I checked my profile and have made the change to allow messaging to me. I don't know how that got changed, because I've always allowed it... Anyway, you should be able to send a message to me now.

I suspect there are a lot of people here who would not mind being contacted by other KTers but are unaware that their messaging is off. I sent you a message.

Socks, I just sent a message back to you. :-)

http://www.findagrave.com  is a wonderful source. If by happenstance, someone posted the grave of your ancestors, you can it there. Most of the data in that site is posted by volunteers.

For the state of Illinois, a very good starting point is:

http://www.cyberdriveillinois.com/

The Mormon Library site at Salt Lake City, Utah, is http://www.familysearch.org/.  This one is extensive. You may find conflicting data from different posters. In case of conflicts, it will require more work to verify which data is true. Ten years ago, the conflicts were many. Since then, some effort has been done to resolve these differences.

Ancestry.com is a fee site. It is one of the largest data bases.

For land patents, see: http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/

(Government Land Office Records, Bureau of land management)

Many counties have genealogical societies with internet sites. Use Google to find these.

JemDandy -- when I search on the LDS site (FamilySearch.org) I don't pay any attention to the stuff that folks have contributed. I only look at the documentation that the Family History Library provides. They often have images of documents for which Ancestry only has indexes, and vice versa.

And a little over six hours ago, I sent Socks a message with the name of the city and county in Indiana where her grandmother was born. (And other information, too.)

Socks, I'm not sure about this but I think if you pull up SSI DeathIndex, type in your grandmothers SS#, the response will probably cover both the place and date of birth.

Lindsey -- That was a terrible blow, to lose both parents when you were so young. Are you the eldest -- became 'mother' to younger sibs?

I have wondered if some people become interested in genealogy when our immediate families have 'gaps'. (Mine does.) I ignored mine until after my father died, partly because his father had been so impressed by his ancestry (largely without cause), and partly because I have no children connected to it.

TulsaRose, I wrote a bit further up in this thread: "The Social Security Death Index is free to search, and has records from 1935 through 2014. BUT, it only lists folks for whom a claim was made for death benefits, and folks for whom the SSA was notified of their death. For example, my mother died at the end of July 1970. Although she had a SS number, she cannot be found on the SS Death Index because she was not collecting SS benefits (she was 53 when she died), and my father didn't put in a claim for SS death benefits. My father died at the beginning of September 1970 (at the age of 56). He is listed on the SS Death Index, because my younger sister and brother received SS survivor benefits."

Socks sent me her grandmother's SS number and she is listed on the SSDI but that database doesn't show place of birth. It does show the state in which the person's SS number was issued, but in Socks' grandmother's case the state of issuance isn't the state in which she was born. Socks' grandmother is not listed on the U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007, which many times does list the place of birth. Even then, however, the place of birth is sometimes just the state, sometimes the county and state, and sometimes the city, county, and state.

Socks wanted to know where her grandmother was born (she knew the state and date but that was all) so that she could get a copy of her grandmother's birth certificate. The first thing I found when researching for her was the marriage record for her grandparents. Although it showed the city of birth of her grandfather, it only showed the county and state for Socks' grandmother. (Which was, basically, all she needed to contact the correct county's vital records department.) But I kept searching, and I did find the city in which Socks' grandmother was born.

ChiSue -- In retrospect, it was better to have lost both parents a month and three days apart than to have lost them years apart. I would give anything and everything to have had them longer, though.

I am the second of four children. My older sister because the guardian of our younger sister, who turned 17 less than two weeks after our father died. I became the guardian of our younger brother, who had turned 13 shortly before our mother died.

Both of my sisters are still living, and we all live in the greater Sacramento, CA, area. Our brother died in 1994 at the age of 38, from complications from AIDS. I was his caregiver for the last year of his life. He was, bar none, the bravest and most courageous person I've ever known.

I didn't "get into genealogy" until a bit over 10 years after our parents' deaths. Three of my four grandparents were deceased, and after my paternal grandmother died in 1981, I guess I realized that there was no one from whom I could get any information. My father had been career Army and we have lived all over the world (a plus), but the huge downside was that we kids didn't grow up near family. No big family get-togethers or family meals where talk about the relatives would reveal information, etc. Oh, there were bits of stuff here and there that we had learned (e.g., I have relatives in the Mafia on my father's side [they're all Italian, of course]), but not a bunch of names I can add to the family tree. (Except that I do know who is Mafia.)

I don't have children, but both of my sisters do, and my husband's brothers all have children. And, of course, now there are grandchildren. It's funny that several of the next generation had school assignments that involve creating a family tree, and they've all come to me for the information. So, what I'm doing will be there for all of my and my husband's families' future generations.

So sad about your brother, Lindsey. You must have been extremely close. He was the same age as my mother when she died.

Oh, those school assignments -- a challenge if you are adopted, like my DH and our DS.

My DH was fascinated to learn he was not Irish (father) and Danish (mother). After discovering in his forties that he was adopted, he learned he is English/Irish (birth mother) and Italian (birth father). BF is actually Sicilian, but the adoption agency decided that would be a hard sell in the 1930's. BF was 'blond and blue', so the agency made him 'German'. Ye gods! I love the Ancestry DNA commercials where the individual finds out he's not 'whatever'. Families!

Yes, Alisande, my brother and I were always very close. I miss him so much. Thirty-eight is much too young for anyone to die. :-(

ChiSue, I get a kick out of those Ancestry commercials, too. As a kid, I always thought that all Italians had brown eyes and brown hair. My Irish/German mother had hazel eyes, and of course my Italian father had brown eyes. I have green eyes. My older sister and our brother got the brown eyes, but my younger sister has hazel eyes. Since green/hazel/blue eyes are from a recessive gene, I knew there had to be light-colored eyes somewhere on my father's side. Imagine my surprise to find out that blond hair and blue eyes are not uncommon in Italy.

My paternal grandfather (born in Italy in 1891) had a sister named Olga. The name Olga, to me, is not Italian. Again, much surprise to find out it is a common name in Italy.

One thing about the Italians that I really like is that women do not change their surname when they marry. Helps with research!

I don't know if your grandfather is from the northern or southern Italy, but remember that much of Italy's northern borders are with German speaking regions of Switzerland and Austria. European borders are not bright lines (from a cultural or language standpoint) and so practices bleed across. Also, many borders have moved repeatedly over the years. Northern Italians tend to be more fair and lighter-haired than their compatriots from the south and from Sicily who tend toward darker skin, hair and eyes.

Italy annexed a small piece of Austria after WW1 which today gives them a region that is still officially German speaking. (Belgium has the same thing with a chunk of land taken from Germany after WW2) .

Snidely, my paternal grandfather was born in a little hilltop comune about 50 miles southeast of Rome. My great-grandparents were also both born in that comune. I do not know about their parents, though. I have the names of my great-grandfather's parents, and I'm pretty sure (but not positive) they were born there, too. I do not know the names or where in Italy my great-grandmother's parents were born. although her surname is one of the more common surnames in that comune, and there is a famous Bishop from that comune.

A former neighbor told me her 3rd great-grandfather WAS a bishop! He fathered many children and provided for them.

Snidely, I wonder if the border issues are what caused the struggle over that old, frozen body which was found: Otzi. I've always been fascinated by that.

Chisue, were bishops to be celibate?

socks, I'd read about Ötzi but hadn't heard about the border issue. Reading about it now, it doesn't seem to have been particularly contentious. There's a lot of rough terrain in the Alps, I would expect there are long border stretches out in the boondocks, away from roads and the like, that are unmarked.

Interesting, thanks.

Socks -- Yes, Catholic priests are *supposed* to be celibate. I see a kind of logic in letting this slide. No, he wasn't celibate, and everybody knew it, but what's to be gained *in real life* by complaining? He took care of his offspring. He could afford to take care of them because he had 'a living' -- in the Church. Who would benefit by raising a hue and cry? Who would be harmed?

When I was trying to gain more information about my DH's birth father's family, one (Italian) man told me, "You writing a book? Skip this page."

I dropped out of ancestry when it got more $...but by then had quite a bit of information on my dad's and my uncle had done an extensive search...in fact he had also searched when on vacation in England...but with both names and multiple spellings...lol...

As an interesting (to me) side note....I dabbled in genealogy back when Ancestry.com was Family tree and contributed lots of information when going thru my mothers' keepsakes after her death. Many letters and news clippings etc. I was never able to get anywhere with DHs' tree, as his father was adopted....end of story from that family of 11 brothers and sisters. DS decided to join in the National Graphic first DNA study (or early) and he discovered that his (my sons') DNA showed an African-American from a more recent migration. It told him where in Africa his ancestor migrated from and a time frame. I don't remember details, but DS was and is delighted to know that, because he has always felt a connection to his many black friends he grew up with and his own dark skin and Curley hair. DH too, altho he has very fair skin color. The family in the mid-west was not very happy to be given that information. My thoughts are that 'how wonderful that thru DNA investigation, so many of us are going to just prove that our country truly is and has been a melting pot of the world, and we are better for it'.