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. > Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2015 08:58:26 -0400 > To: [email protected] > Subject: [NYC-ROOTS] NY Long Form Birth Certs > From: [email protected] > > I was hoping to get a better understanding of the "long" version of NY > birth certificates. Over the years I've obtained many copies of birth > certificates from FamilySearch.org. I was wondering, if these are the long > or short forms? Also, how to the two versions differ? I'm wondering if I > need to go back and order second copies of some of the certs I have. > > TIA > Debbie > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message