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