One reason for the difficulty in obtaining DC birth certificates is that they were filed by date in the order received--not alphabetically. And Patsy is right, the child's given name was not provided, except as a supplemental report submitted at a later date (very few people chose to do this). Some doctors, hospitals, and midwives were very prompt, and filed certificates within a few days of the birth. Others took their time, and certificates were frequently filed a month or even longer after the birth...makes for very difficult research. For those families with a particular religion, Church records are often the way to go in this case. Particularly for DC's once-large Catholic community, just knowing your ancestors' general neighborhood will allow you to identify the correct Catholic church. Our family has had a great deal of success obtaining baptismal records this way, with the added benefit that Church records name the child, the parents, as well as the godparents, plus the date of birth. We can then go back & obtain the civil birth record more easily. Keep in mind that Congress provides the funding for everything that goes on in the District of Columbia, and that throughout our country's history there has always been a money crunch, with the District frequently being left short of funds. Frank -----Original Message----- From: Patsy Lowe <palowe@citlink.net> To: WashingtonDC-L@rootsweb.com <WashingtonDC-L@rootsweb.com> Date: Monday, December 17, 2001 4:27 AM Subject: [WashingtonDC'' ] DC birth records >Helen, >The DC birth records that I've obtained over the years don't have the >name of the child on them. They are apparently filed under the parents' >names, and the child's name is "infant male" or "infant female". Even if >you provide the exact birth date of the child, they don't seem to be >able to find it without the parents' names. I suspect that these records >have not been indexed except by the parents' names, which seems strange >to us in this age of computerization, but remember that the records >weren't created in the first place with future genealogists in mind. >Also remember that the DC government is perpetually on the brink of >bankruptcy, and the indexing of early birth records is probably pretty >low on the priority list. >Patsy Lowe > > >============================== >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 >