Thank you for that very helpful info.  I have my own birth cert from the hospital and it doesn't even have all that info.  Very useful post. Thanks again.Virginia   From: Frances Brunner via <[email protected]> To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, April 20, 2015 12:00 PM Subject: Re: [NYC-ROOTS] NY Long Form Birth Certs Hi, My name is Frances, and I'm new to this list. I didn't know how to send an introductory message, so here it is, I guess! My family have been born in NYC since the first immigrants came ca. 1835. Most were born in Manhattan, but some in Brooklyn and the Bronx.I have birth certificates back till my grandmother's generation, which would date about 1900. I haven't gotten any yet that go further back. However, I would say that, when I hear "long form", I consider this to be the certificate that was filled up by the hospital and sent into the Department of Health. I don't have one in front of me, but I know that the ones I do have contain the names and ages of the parents, their address (because a copy of the filed certificate would be sent to them), father's occupation, place where the birth occurred, and the name and signature of the attendant. The most recent example I have is my daughter's, from 1984. In the case of my grandmother, her mother had chosen the name Margaret, but whoever filed up the certificate had written "Magdalena",  There had been some kind of family dispute going on regarding the name. It took some time to discover this, because my great grandmother was illiterate. When they made the name correction, someone actually crossed out "Magdalena" on the original document, and wrote in "Margaret,"  and this is how the official amendment was recorded. So, in documents of this era, I imagine that if there were any amendments, you would see this on the long form, too. I hope to pay a visit to the Municipal Archives in the near future. I have identified some birth records that date back to the 1880s. I have a crop of relatives that were born in Manhattan in the 1860s, and can't find any birth records for them. I think I will be more likely to find baptismal records for those people. Their parish churches are still operating. But due to the fact that I have one generation in which some people have birth records and some don't, I can see that registering of births was not strictly required or enforced until more modern times.

Dear Virginia, You are very welcome! I wanted to add this bit:So far, the first child I have been able to locate who was born in America was born in 1858/59-estimated due to the fact that he is listed on the 1860 Census. I cannot find a Municipal birth record listed for him, although for sure, he was baptized before he was a month old, according to a family tradition that is still adhered to. I am sure that this tradition arose from the high rate of infant mortality. The earliest Municipal birth record I can find is from 1862, that guy's brother. In addition, I have been able to find records for some of his siblings, but not all. Interesting to note is that I have found a birth record for a child who seems to have only lived for a day. Why that child, and not the others? This is the generation/era I refer to when I say that the record keeping gets sketchy. Either they were not required to file with the City, or the rules were not that strict. In addition, the fact that the parents were illiterate does not help the matter much. Perhaps someone in this forum knows the year when Municipal reporting became a requirement, but I would also assume it took awhile for everyone to adopt the practice, after the rule went into effect/became law. I have come to realize that, due to poverty and custom, a woman was not guaranteed a skilled attendant, such as a midwife, when she gave birth. Furthermore, if the parents were illiterate, and they had the help of some self-taught midwife from the neighborhood, that woman may well have been illiterate, too. How could the City enforce a law which required the reporting of a birth? The Lower East Side of Manhattan was the most densely populated area on the face of the Earth at that time. I have found records of my family in which eight or nine people, not all of them related, shared one or two rooms-I know the buildings and neighborhoods where they lived. There were some charitable organizations which catered to the poor, but even in the case of visiting nurses, who might have recorded births for illiterate families (I wonder if anyone knows anything about this?) they must have been overwhelmed by the number of people they had to serve on a regular basis, not to mention how busy they must have been during various annual epidemics of such diseases as cholera, typhoid, measles, etc. In my case, I am referring to Irish Catholic relatives, who came from the Gaeltacht, but who spoke some English when they got here. If you are dealing with people who were not English speakers, or not literate in English (maybe spoke functional English, maybe literate in their own language, but not English), this problem of literacy of the parents and/or the birth attendant may have made the ruling somewhat unenforceable, and may have made the record somewhat inaccurate (spelling of names, street address, etc.). I have one naturalization record from the 1860s, in which the man, who came over before 1850, signed the certificate with an X. While literacy classes may have been on offer at the time, I doubt a man who was supporting a family had any free time to attend them. Same for the mother of a crop of children who had to function in squalor, with little money. People who were from a different, more affluent class, probably have more, and more accurate, records. So it depends on who you are looking for, and what their background was. Once I have the original long forms, and have had a chance to research some baptismal certificates, I believe I may be able to pinpoint some more siblings in the Municipal records. Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2015 16:51:45 +0000 From: [email protected] To: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] Subject: Re: [NYC-ROOTS] NY Long Form Birth Certs Thank you for that very helpful info. I have my own birth cert from the hospital and it doesn't even have all that info. Very useful post. Thanks again.Virginia From: Frances Brunner via <[email protected]> To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, April 20, 2015 12:00 PM Subject: Re: [NYC-ROOTS] NY Long Form Birth Certs Hi,My name is Frances, and I'm new to this list. I didn't know how to send an introductory message, so here it is, I guess!My family have been born in NYC since the first immigrants came ca. 1835. Most were born in Manhattan, but some in Brooklyn and the Bronx.I have birth certificates back till my grandmother's generation, which would date about 1900. I haven't gotten any yet that go further back.However, I would say that, when I hear "long form", I consider this to be the certificate that was filled up by the hospital and sent into the Department of Health. I don't have one in front of me, but I know that the ones I do have contain the names and ages of the parents, their address (because a copy of the filed certificate would be sent to them), father's occupation, place where the birth occurred, and the name and signature of the attendant. The most recent example I have is my daughter's, from 1984.In the case of my grandmother, her mother had chosen the name Margaret, but whoever filed up the certificate had written "Magdalena", There had been some kind of family dispute going on regarding the name. It took some time to discover this, because my great grandmother was illiterate. When they made the name correction, someone actually crossed out "Magdalena" on the original document, and wrote in "Margaret," and this is how the official amendment was recorded. So, in documents of this era, I imagine that if there were any amendments, you would see this on the long form, too. I hope to pay a visit to the Municipal Archives in the near future. I have identified some birth records that date back to the 1880s. I have a crop of relatives that were born in Manhattan in the 1860s, and can't find any birth records for them. I think I will be more likely to find baptismal records for those people. Their parish churches are still operating. But due to the fact that I have one generation in which some people have birth records and some don't, I can see that registering of births was not strictly required or enforced until more modern times.