Hi Donna, You were not told correctly. The present courthouse was built in 1883. I know of no fires in that building or its predecessors. The courthouse has records going back to the formation of the county, 1787, and I personally used records from that date just last week. Some of these are in various offices, others in a basement vault, some indexed, some not, some bound, some loose, etc. Mimi Reed has compiled an excellent guide to the idiosyncrasies of courthouse records in Huntingdon County. You can read it online here: http://www.rootsweb.com/~pahuntin/courthouse.htm As far as births/deaths -- All counties in Pennsylvania were required to register births, marriages, and deaths from 1852 to 1854. Some did to a greater degree than others, and some don't even have these records. All counties in Pennsylvania were required to issue licenses for all marriages beginning Oct. 1, 1885, and all have continued to this day. All counties in Pennsylvania were required to register births and deaths beginning in 1893. They continued this until 1906 when the state took over this function and began issuing death certificates. Individuals in the '30s and '40s who needed birth certificates for Social Security purposes, or whatever, and for whom no record existed, registered in the "Delayed Births" category. These books are all in the basement vault at Huntingdon. Justin At 10:02 AM 8/3/06, [email protected] wrote: >Hello Folks: > >I had heard through the grapevine that the court house in Huntingdon had >burnt and most of the records were destroyed.... is this true? I know >this has been told of several other county court houses and it's simply >not true for them..... just checkin'. > >Are there Delayed Birth Registers at the courthouse or the local >historical society? > >Donna Heller Zinn of Newville, Cumberland Co., PA. Justin Kirk Houser http://users.adelphia.net/~jkhouser84/ www.jkhouser.com Listowner, [email protected] Member, Board of Directors, Bellefonte Area School District Historian, Schürch Family Association of North America Lay Leader, Valley View United Methodist Church (near Bellefonte, PA) http://users.adelphia.net/~jkhouser84/church1.htm Certified Lay Speaker, The United Methodist Church Assistant Lay Leader, The State College District, UMC "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature" (St. Mark 16:15)