If it makes you feel any better, New Jersey is not the only state doing this. I requested my ex-husband's birth certificate from Colorado, and they refused to send it to me. Personally, I think most of them just don't want to be bothered with looking it up, copying and mailing. Good Luck Hunting [email protected] wrote: > Jodee: > > It appears you reside or work in the area where my ancestors resided. I must > have missed the time period that vitals are available in Warren county, > particularly birth and death. I saw the message that says you have to have > very specific information in order to obtain a record. Does this apply even > to records that are pre-1900? Is an index of names maintained by each county? > Can someone write and just ask if the name appears in the index for a > specific date or time period? Can someone get a copy of the page of names > for a specific time period so that a record can be ordered later like you can > for the grantor-grantee indexes? > > It can certainly be frustrating if we don't have all the pieces to the puzzle > that is now required. This is exactly the reason a genealogist is looking > for the birth certificates: to confirm or ascertain a parents name that > matches with a child's name, an exact date of the event rather than an > approximate date of an event based on the age given in another record we > might have; i.e. the census, a marriage age, or death certificate. Or even > to verify information provided by another researcher. > > As an example of this would be what I discovered last night when I was > reviewing the marriage vitals for Oakland County, MI. Another researcher > provided the surname name of the spouse to be White and the date of the > marriage. When I went to the indiex of names to ascertain if they were > married in that county, I found the entry and it showed her surname to be > Wallace and not White. The only way I will know for sure that her maiden > name was Wallace and not White would be to check for a death record to see if > her parents names were listed as Wallace or White. Because of the time > period of the marriage, I will have a problem researching ithe death records > because the microfilm ends in 1937. If she died after that date, I will be > out of luck to verify this surname. > > I know that the early marriages have been published in volumes and are on > microfilm at the LDS but I have not found birth records or death records to > be on film. At least not yet that I know of. Probably because I don't need > modern records. Is the modern records--those after 1900--that have the > requirement for more particulars because there is a chance that the person > may still be living? Or is it just a concern that someone is going to get a > birth record for a deceased child and then taken on that persona? > > Any help would be appreciated. Oh, the time period I need for vitals would > be pre-revolution to about 1860. Most of my people on my direct line have > left the state by that time, but I can sympathize with those who are seeking > "modern" records if the requirements to obtain records means you need to have > ALL the information to obtain the record. As set out above, this may be hard > to do if you don't have information to fill in the blanks. Some allowance > needs to be made for missing pieces and being "hardline" is a tough decision > to make and is perhaps going overboard to protect "the privacy" of an > individual record. Can the state or municipal agency really "control" those > individuals who are seeking records for illegtimate purposes? I don't think > so. > > Christie Trapp > > ==== NJWARREN Mailing List ==== > > ============================== > To join Ancestry.com and access our 1.2 billion online genealogy records, go to: > http://www.ancestry.com/rd/redir.asp?targetid=571&sourceid=1237