To The Genealogist and the Courthouse

Fields to Include In Your Forms

by James Harrington

Here you will find a list of the fields you should include on the forms you use to copy data onto from individual vital records at a county courthouse in Wisconsin or Michigan. You will typically not be able to fill in every field on a form because the data on records varies according to the time period in which the record was created, and because it's common for a requested data field not to have been filled in by the original recorder for one reason or another. You want to have one single form that fits all records of a given type, though, in order to make it easier to retrieve information from your forms after you get home.

These are the fields one would want to use for vital records specifically from Wisconsin and Michigan. For vital records from other states, possibly different fields would be more appropriate.

There will be some information on most records which I have not included spaces for on my own forms, because I am not interested in it. For example, I don't record the filing dates of birth or marriage records or the name and address of the midwife or physician that delivered a child or returned the information. If you find any data fields not included here that you want to copy, just add them to your own forms.

I am listing the fields in the order that's generally most helpful. I experimented with different orders to see what lets the copying go most smoothly, and this is what I wound up with. No order is perfect for all records of a type, though, because the order of fields on the forms changed during the years. I never found a convenient order for death records for some reason - too big a variability in the order of fields on the forms from different periods, I guess - but did my best.

Birth Records

Marriage Records

Death Records


To The Genealogist and the Courthouse