Finding a county record for a birth that occurred in 1940 is usually a piece of cake,
at least if you know where it occurred. Finding a county record for a birth that
occurred in Wisconsin in 1840, on the other hand, just isn't going to happen except
by some miracle. First of all, the State of Wisconsin didn't even exist until 1848.
There were a very few civil districts in the Wisconsin Territory that recorded births,
but those places of recording were far from most other locations in the territory and
travel was difficult. There was no legal requirement to report births to these old
civil seats, and most births just didn't get officially recorded anywhere until later
in the 1800s. The only three county seats in the state that do record some births
occurring in Wisconsin Territory or the state before 1850 are Green Bay (Brown
Co.), Milwaukee (Milwaukee Co.), and Whitehall (Trempealeau Co.). In the case of
deaths, Milwaukee did not record them prior to 1850, but besides Green Bay and
Whitehall, three other locations recorded some very early deaths: Grantsburg
(Burnett Co.), Port Washington (Ozaukee Co.), and Waupaca (Waupaca Co.). Across
the state of Wisconsin, marriages tended to be recorded earlier than births or
deaths, so there is some small chance a marriage you are looking for will have been
recorded even in the earliest days of the state. The
Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services
website lists the years in which the earliest vital records have been recorded in
each Wisconsin county. Understand that in most cases the recording by the counties
was very sparse until much later than the dates listed on that Web page.
Many of us had grandparents who were born between 1880 and 1910, and so this hardly
feels like the distant past to us. However, there was no law requiring strict
reporting of all births, marriages, and deaths in Wisconsin until 1906, or in Michigan
until 1900. Prior to that, reporting increased throughout the late 1800s into the 20th
century, but you are as likely not to find your grandparent's birth record prior to 1906
(Wisconsin) or 1900 (Michigan) as you are to find it. Marriages were reported much more
often than births before the year reporting was required. Deaths seem to have been
reported even less frequently than births. After 1906/1900 there was a short transition
time as people got used to the new requirements, and after 1915 (or earlier, depending on
the county) you can probably expect to find the records you're looking for. Yet even then,
there will be rare surprises, where a birth or death record you should have found simply
won't be there for some reason. Its absence could be due to one of the reasons given
below, but if you're quite certain it should be in the county where you are looking and
it isn't, and the date is after the year vital records had to be reported, it might be
worthwhile to check whether the record is perhaps at the state-level vital records office,
and somehow out-of-place or otherwise just not present at the county office.
Theoretically this should never happen, but the offices are run by humans who must be
allowed to make mistakes on occasion! One should assume this is a situation that could
arise. If a post-1906/1900 record is in the county index but not in the book of records
where indicated, and an office clerk confirms it is indeed missing from the record book,
it definitely should be available at the state vital records office.
Many people believe that a death record or birth record will be found in the
county in which the family or individual lived, but Wisconsin and Michigan law has
always specified that vital records are to be recorded in the county in which the
events occurred, not the county in which the person lived. If a person was in a hospital
in a different county and passed away there, the death record is expected to be found
in the county where the hospital was, not where the person lived. If there was a
death due to automobile accident or heart attack away from home, the death is recorded
in the county where it occurred. Similarly, if a mother was away from home in another
county when her child was born, the birth record should be found in the county where
the child was born. Unfortunately, it's hard to find those records that aren't where
you expect them to be! Start looking where you expect to find a record, but if you
don't find it, check adjoining counties. If you have an obituary, look in the county
where the obituary says the person died before looking where they lived.
Luckily, when a non-resident of a county dies or non-residents have a child, many
counties send a "courtesy copy" of the vital record to the home county of the deceased
or of the parents of the newborn. The home county may then file the record as though the
event had occurred in their own county, and so the record will still be found where most
people would expect it to be. However, not all counties send courtesy copies because it
is an extra expense and is not required, and not all counties, receiving courtesy copies
from elsewhere, add the copy of the record to their books. Just be glad when you find an
out-of-county record in the county where you expect it to be.
In addition, there seems to be a rule, at least in Wisconsin, that parents can file a
record of their child's birth in their home county rather than the county of the child's
birth. The place of birth will correctly be listed, but there will be no record of the
birth in the county of birth; instead it is in the county of the parents' residence.
Perhaps this is related to having to report the name of the child some days after
the birth if the child's name hasn't been decided already by the time he or she is
born. This situation with birth records normally doesn't happen, but it does occur
sometimes, so if you know where the child was born and it's not necessarily where the
parents lived, and you don't find the birth record where the child was born, try
looking in other counties where the parents may have lived. In a case like this, it
would be helpful to find a newspaper birth announcement that gives the place of
residence of the parents!
Rarely, marriages are not reported in the county in which the ceremony takes place,
but are instead reported in the county of residence of the bride and groom if it
is different. Perhaps this occurs when a marriage license is obtained prior to
knowing where the marriage will take place, the marriage is outside of the county
that issued the license, and then the information is returned to the county in which
the license was issued. Whatever the reason, this can make finding a marriage record
difficult. Luckily it very rarely happens, and in many cases a county will send a
courtesy copy of a marriage of non-residents to the county of residence of the couple.
But if you know where a marriage occurred and you don't find a record of it in
that county, it's worth casting about in adjacent counties.
One common reason for vital records not being in the county in which one expects
is due to the way counties are created. When a state is first created, it may have
fewer counties than it does later in its existence. Over time, county boundaries may
change - new counties are carved out of pre-existing counties, and pieces of land may
be transferred from one county to another. This isn't likely to happen in the 21st
century, but it did happen frequently long ago. Vital records are recorded in the
county in which the event occurred - the county the specific location was in at the
time of the event. If an event occurred in county A in 1857 and that city later
became a part of county B in 1875, the record will typically not be transferred over
to the records office of county B. It was still be found in county A. Years later in
the present day you may go to county B looking for the record because that's where
the city is now, and it won't be there. If you are looking for an early record
and you know approximately where the event occurred, be sure to find out what county
that location was in at the time of the event. The
listing of earliest records in various counties in Wisconsin
may be especially useful in this regard - if an event occurs before the
earliest vital record recorded in a county, it may be that the county didn't
exist before that date, and you should check to see if perhaps it was recorded
in a different county which contained the locality at that earlier time. (But note,
the years given are not necessarily totally accurate. The Brown County Web site,
for example, says that the earliest birth record for Brown County dates from 1746.)
Barring a more convenient source of information, official county Web sites often
tell when the county was created and what county or counties it was created from.
There is hardly a fire in a courthouse every year, but considering the number of
counties there are in Midwestern states and that vital records have resided in the
courthouses in most counties for over a century, it's not suprising that some records
have been destroyed by catastrophic events. Remember that virtually the entire 1890 U.S.
census was destroyed in a fire! When there is a fire in a courthouse, some records may
survive while others are lost, or perhaps only the indexes survive but the actual
records are lost, in which case the names of the individual(s) involved and the
date of the event are saved but all additional detail is lost. In Wisconsin and the
Upper Peninsula of Michigan, records have been lost from these counties due to fires:
Alger County, MI - water damage in 1970 made some index entries illegible, effectively
ending anyone's access to the affected records until an index is reconstructed.
Marquette County, MI - fire destroyed nearly all records from 1880-1890, but indexes remain.
Earlier and subsequent records were unaffected.
Dodge County, WI - fire in 1877 destroyed all pre-existing records, but indexes remain.
Those remarks pertain only to birth, marriage, and death records. Divorce, probate,
and land records may not have been affected - you'd have to inquire at the courthouse.
If a record is in the index and you can't find it where it says it should be, the first
thing to do is double-check the volume and page number. When I have encountered
this situation, it's nearly always been the my own fault, from misreading the
index, copying the location from the wrong line of the index, etc. If you're completely
sure you have the correct reference, get assistance. You might check the record before
or after to see if it's a case of misindexing by one page, but you should not page
through the book to try to locate the record yourself. Normally a clerk will be willing
to help locate the record.
If a book is missing from the shelf, probably one of the clerks has it at their desk.
Usually they can make it available to you. In Rusk County, Wisconsin, one very early
book of records may have been totally lost. I was unable to locate the volume
an index entry referred to, and two clerks were also unable to locate the volume and
had no idea where it might be.
In both Michigan and Wisconsin, rules of access prohibit members of the public from
paging through record books looking for records of interest. This is because of
privacy issues and to keep the wear and tear on old paper records to a minimum. One
does access records by page numbers, so finding the right record naturally has one
glancing briefly at numerous irrelevant pages, but it is simply not allowed to look at
every record to find the particular one you want. The only approved method for finding
records is to look in a name index. Every record is supposed to have a corresponding
entry in an index which gives you a volume and page number or a record number. However,
the indexes are created by fallible human beings who have created millions of individual
index entries over the last 125 years and more. There should be verification procedures
in place to ensure that all records are properly indexed, but in fact on occasion there
simply is no entry for the record you want in the index even though the record does exist,
if only you could find it.
It is impossible to determine whether a record you thought would be there is "missing
in action" from this cause. Records in books are not arranged in alphabetical order or
in order by date of the event; they are simply put in books in the order in which the
paperwork was received at the office. Thus, it is extremely difficult to find a
specific record without the index entry. Clerks don't have time to page through books
for you looking for a record on the off-chance that somebody accidentally left it out
of the index, because 99% of the time the record is missing just because it's not
there and any search through the record book is a big waste of time. Office personnel
will simply refuse to perform that search. You might be willing to perform the search
yourself, but the rules prohibit you from looking for a record by paging through a
record book, period. For all practical purposes, any record that is not listed in
the index is not there and you will have to accept that. Either the event occurred
somewhere else (most likely in the 20th century) or the event did occur there but
the record is not accessible either because no official record was ever created
or the record was not included in the index.
Sometimes new indexes are created, either by the county personnel or by volunteers.
Usually the old indexes are not discarded, because the irony of creating new indexes
is that the new indexes will probably accidentally leave a few records unindexed as well,
it will simply be different records than before. The offices usually retain the old
indexes as a backup, or only use the new indexes as a backup. If a record is missing
that you think should be there, and there are two sets of indexes covering the time
period of interest for some reason, be sure to check both indexes. With luck the name
may appear in the second index you check.
Most counties do not have these additional index volumes, but be aware that half the
time, when a clerk shows you where the indexes to the county vital records are, they won't
point out the existence of a second set of indexes even if they are sitting right there
for you to use. Also be aware that, nearly invariably, the indexes they don't point out
are the newer ones, which are usually completely alphabetized and by far the most
convenient! The clerk is not being deliberately obstructive - usually the second index
has been created by a volunteer, and its correctness has not been verified by the county
personnel. The clerk is simply responsibly pointing out the "official" indexes they use
themselves, which have been at least partially verified and as far as they know are the
most reliable indexes for finding names. However, as a genealogist you should
always
be sure to look around for alternative index volumes you could use - the alternatives
are usually created by a genealogist for genealogists and can be huge timesavers, aside
from the issue of finding entries missing from the index of first choice.
If you are looking for an entry for a marriage in an index, you'll normally be in a good
situation if you know the groom's name. If you know both bride's and groom's names it
doesn't hurt, and on the rarest occasion, it may help - if both brides and grooms are
indexed, once in a great while the person who made the index entry would forget to
make the entry for both the bride and the groom. Then you might not find an entry for
the groom's name in the index, for example, but if you look for the bride's name in the
brides index you'll find the entry.
Sometimes all you know is the bride's name, though. Or perhaps you are looking for all
the marriages of people with a given surname, and first you check for the men as grooms,
then you check for the women as brides. All counties will have the grooms names roughly
alphabetized in a marriage index so you only need to look through a few pages of the
index for them, but unfortunately many will have no index sorted by the bride's name. This
makes a lot more work for you. In cases like this, some people automatically think, "Oh,
I can't find the marriage in this index! I can't search this huge book with the bride's
names in totally random order!" If you run into this situation, don't be discouraged.
To be sure, the job of finding the bride's name grows dramatically if you can't just
look up her last name in an index sorted by last name of the bride. However, when that
isn't available, the job doesn't turn into one of infinite time - it only seems so before
you look.
Actually, there are no Wisconsin or northern Michigan counties without bride's indexes
for which the entire marriage index cannot be searched for the bride's name in a
reasonable amount of time. The job becomes one of potentially looking at the entry for
every marriage that ever was recorded in the county, and this sounds impractical, but
if you scan quickly you can go through an entire volume of an index, which usually
contains about 300 pages of marriage entries with maybe 40 names per page,
in twenty to thirty minutes. There may only be two volumes to the marriage index, or
there may be ten, but I always found the total amount of time required to
scan marriage indexes for a surname in the absence of a brides index to be less than
four hours, and usually only 1.5 to 3 hours, tending towards the shorter time period.
It's boring and requires maintaining focus so that you don't scan the whole index and
then miss the marriage(s) you are looking for, but it's very doable. But to be sure,
scanning for brides where there is no brides index is not one of the more enjoyable
aspects of genealogy. Considering that tasks to be performed with the indexes by office
staff were presumably the same in all counties, one certainly wonders why some counties
thought brides indexes were important, and others decided not to maintain brides indexes
at all.
When there is no bride's index, more often than not it's only for one or two of the
earliest volumes of indexes, and then the more recent indexes do index the brides. You can
click here to see the
status of indexes
in Wisconsin and upper Michigan counties in 2004/2005, with special attention given to
availability of bride's indexes. Click here for
hints on scanning indexes
rapidly.
If you live in a county with no marriage index for the brides or only a partial index
for brides, you have an opportunity to perform probably the most useful service for your
fellow genealogists there could be - take the initiative to organize a project to create
a brides index. Many of the brides indexes that do exist in various counties were created
by volunteers, either individuals or members of the local genealogical society. All you
have to do is scan an entire marriage index for a bride's name once, and you will
immediately appreciate the benefit that would be realized by nearly every genealogist who
ever steps into that office if you or your local genealogical or historical society
created that index. Over time, you will surely benefit from other's work. There is hardly
a better way to repay others for their efforts than to assume responsibility in seeing that
a fully alphabetized bride's index is created for your county's vital records office. To
estimate the time required, assuming you have access to a computer and can type, count
the total number of pages in the index books and multiply by maybe 1.25. That would give
a rough estimate of the total number of hours required, if you only retype what's already
in the index into a spreadsheet that can be sorted and reprinted in alphabetical order.
For a more accurate estimate, just type up a few pages and see how long that takes, then
extrapolate to the total number of pages you intend to work on. Even if you only manage
to get out a brides index for a few years of marriages, it still saves time and it's worth
doing. Take time to consult with others who have performed the task in other counties to
hear their suggestions on what is most useful to do while creating the index so you are
sure the result of your work will be as useful as can be given your time constraints.
Most county vital record offices would be glad to work with you because their own staff
will benefit, too, if your index is as accurate as they need for their work. They may
be able to suggest how to verify your work for accuracy, which is equally important for
them and for your fellow genealogists.
One of the most frustrating situations you can encounter in a vital records office is
to have the name of a bride, but no groom's name, and then open an index book and find
that only the groom's names are listed - the bride's names don't even appear in the
index. You may be willing and able to spend the time needed to search the entire index
for the bride's name, but the task is made flat out impossible by the total absence of
the brides' names from the index. Luckily, this situation is very rarely encountered.
The author has encountered brideless marriage indexes in these Wisconsin and upper
Michigan counties:
-
Alger Co., MI - can't find brides for marriages after 1950
-
Iron Co., MI - brides are not listed
-
Outagamie Co., WI - brides not listed 1852-1867
As with counties with no brides indexes but with indexes that at least list the brides,
your local volunteer activity to create marriage indexes that list brides in these
counties would have a great impact on your fellow genealogists as well as your own work
in these counties. If you can organize a project to create marriage indexes for brides
in any of these counties, you will certainly be doing your part to make genealogy
easier for everyone and repaying volunteer work others have done for your benefit.
There is only one approved way to get at courthouse records - through indexes. One
would naturally assume, then, that all the records are indexed, except for the odd
record that might inadvertently have been left out of the index. However, there are
two special cases in which there is no index book corresponding to the records. The
first is the basic case for where there is an entire book of records, for which
no index exists. Because the rules state that records can only be accessed through
an index, such a book of records would be inaccessible to the public. Every courthouse
has done their best to see that all records are indexed, but in fact the author
discovered two books of records at Douglas County, Wisconsin, none of which were
indexed. The books were sitting in a display case in the Register of Deeds office,
and it turned out that they were the first book of recorded marriages and the first
book of recorded deaths for the county. The Registrar of Deeds was not aware that
these two book of official records existed until the books were brought directly to
her attention; they had probably been sitting in the display case for many years. The
records were unindexed. Hopefully an index will be created, but until such a time
nobody can access those early records. (If you need them, contact the Register of
Deeds in Douglas County and request that an index be created. Better yet, volunteer
to create an index - it would only take a few hours and spreadsheet software on
a laptop computer.)
There is another type of vital record which does not appear in vital record
indexes. The very earliest marriages are usually short hand-written documents
from a minister or justice of the peace that document a marriage. Where these
documents exist, they have usually been collected into some book of marriages and
indexed appropriately, but in some counties these documents were originally recorded
as deeds or as some kind of miscellaneous document or even as probate documents and
were never collected into a single book of marriage records and placed with the regular
books of marriages that were created later. In one county in Wisconsin, these old
marriages were collected and an index was created, but the collection was not
placed with the marriage records in the Register of Deeds office which is responsible
for vital records - the records are in a different office at the couthouse. In other
counties where those records exist - if there are any others, it's difficult to know -
the very old records remain scattered and nobody has ever made a point of finding them
and creating an index. If you are looking for a specific early marriage whose date
might be a little before those in the first book of marriage records in the county,
it would be worth looking for other sorts of early records preceding the first marriage
book that might possibly include a few very early marriage documents, either as
"miscellaneous records" or old deed books or early probate records.
County indexes typically have index entries sorted first by the first initial of the last
name, but within all the entries for people whose last names began with 'H', for example,
the entries are ordered by the date of the event. Thus instead of looking for "Hansen" and
finding all the Hansen entries, you look for 'H' and start scanning names, picking out
the entries that say "Hansen." If you know about when the event occurred you don't have to
look at very many names, but if you can only narrow it down to some 40-year period, you
will probably have to look at a lot of 'H's! Needless to say, a strict alphabetical index
is far more convenient and less time-consuming by a mile. There are a number of
counties for which alphabetical indexes exist
.
If there isn't an alphabetical index in your county, volunteer to create one and help
everybody out! Until one is created, you'll just have to slog through a lot of names
to find the one(s) you want. Not fun, but necessary.
Even though vital records are mostly public documents, there are exceptions. First of all,
in most states, including Michigan and Minnesota, birth records that are less than 100
years old are confidential. It's not allowed to look at an index that merely refers to those
confidential records. Moreover, even in Wisconsin, records of illegitimate births are
completely off-limits. Those records are sequestered into special books and the public
is not allowed to view them. Even the index entries to those records are supposed to have
been deleted from the index volumes. (At one time those records were allowed to be
viewed, but no longer.) Also, records of stillborn children are confidential, and the
corresponding index entries may have been deleted.
If you are only looking for a few specific records you should always have time to complete
your search in the hours that are open to you at a vital records office, but if you are,
for example, looking for all the records for a given surname, there are some counties
where there just isn't enough time in one day. If the surname is somewhat common, it's
easy to understand how you could run out of hours in a day in a county that has a large
population with many people of that surname. That's just life. But it is quite frustrating
indeed when you have to return on a second weekday to finish up because the vital records
office has significantly shortened the number of hours allowed genealogists for searching to
well below the typical 6 or 8 hours of access to the records. There are three counties with especially short hours where you are likely to experience
this frustration:
Chippewa Co., Michigan
Milwaukee Co., Wisconsin
Portage Co., Wisconsin
At this time, Chippewa County and Milwaukee County both allow a genealogist only four
hours per day. Portage County allows only four-and-a-half hours. It's no use trying to
finagle more time at any of these places, because they're very strict. The Milwaukee
office really has no choice - they have limited space and too many people who want to
come in so they have people come in shifts. The other two counties have limited access
time for other reasons, though. If you need more time than is allowed in a day in
Chippewa County or Portage County, it's worth writing a polite letter to the County Clerk
(Chippewa Co.) or the Register of Deeds (Portage Co.) requesting a change in their
hours and explaining why. If enough people write, they may make the change, who knows?
But otherwise, the only thing you can do is say, again, "That's life."
Records from certain time periods included some information that was later designated by
law to be confidential. Each individual county was allowed to decide for themselves how
to address the situation, but they are required to allow the public to view the portion
of the information that was not confidential and not the portion that is confidential.
Many counties opt to have one of the clerks show you the records, and the clerk will wait
there while you view those records, placing a piece of paper over the parts of the record
you are not allowed to view. If this is the solution the county chose, it takes their
personnel a lot of time to show you the records. Though the counties are required to
give you access to the non-confidential records, they are not required to provide you
that access during the entire time the office is open. The hours during which staff is
available to assist with viewing records with confidential data may be restricted, or
the total amount of time you are allowed to spend with a person showing a record may be
restricted regardless of the timeframe, or you may simply be told no personnel are available
at that time and you'll have to look at the record on a different day. In one case the
author unwittingly showed up at a courthouse outside the timeframe permitted for showing
records with confidential information and the Registrar of Deeds kindly gave special
permission for a clerk to help by showing the records, but usually offices are very strict
about all their rules pertaining to genealogical research.
Despite certain restrictions, great compliment should be given to the personnel who
assume the task of showing records with confidential information. Almost without exception
the clerks help at a moment's notice, stopping whatever they are doing instantly with
good cheer in the most helpful way possible. They always insist rules be followed, but
they do their best to be helpful within the rules.
It's good to know ahead of time when there are restrictions on when records with
confidential information may be viewed. You can click here to see a
list of counties
with mention of any limitations on viewing records with confidential information.
In the immediately preceding paragraphs, we're distinguishing between "confidential
records," which may never be viewed at all, and "records with confidential information,"
which may be viewed in part. The preceding paragraphs apply only to the latter.
Two counties place special restrictions on when
any records may be viewed, or
some records that don't contain confidential information:
- Oneida County, Wisconsin
- Milwaukee County, Wisconsin
See the
comments on individual counties
for details.
The names that are written into the index are copied from the original record, or else
copied from a registration book that contained names copied from the original record.
They may even have been copied from another older index book which contained names copied
from the original record or a registration book. The name on the record the index
directs you to, if it is from before 1906 (Wisconsin) or 1900 (Michigan), was probably
copied from a certificate, which is a separate piece of paper. The person writing the name
on the original certificate or record may not have inquired how the person spelled their
name, especially in days long past where many people didn't read or write (or spell), in
which case it's spelled the way he thought it would be spelled. The people whose
information got copied into the index or the original record may not have written as
clearly as others would write, and so the person copying may incorrectly interpret the
letters that are written. These things give ample opportunity for a name to be spelled
incorrectly in the index. If the index has been fully alphabetized, and especially if
it has been computerized, you may completely miss seeing names that have been misspelled
unless you make a concerted effort to find them. If it's only alphabetized by the first
letter of the surname, you'll have to consider other names that look like variants on
the spelling you're expecting as you scan for the name you are looking for.
Some indexes are typed, but most are handwritten. On the whole, writing in the indexes
is remarkably clear and consistent, nothing like the handwriting you struggle with when
viewing some population schedules from a census, but there are exceptions. When the
writing is very old it may be in
a more decorative script
, with the letters formed in ways we
don't form them today. Or the person writing may not make much difference between certain
letters, such as between cursive 'L' and 'S', or between 'u' and 'n'. If you've looked at
a lot of writing in indexes, these things are much less of a problem. Alternatively, you
can look here for many good
examples of the Spencerian Method
of writing to see how letters are formed, and then when you see the writing you'll have
learned how to read it. These examples use the same method as did most of the people writing
the old entries in the index books.
It's one thing when the letters are formed using a method you aren't familiar with but
can learn to recognize. It's another when the handwriting was simply poor. There seems to
have been a lot of attention paid to the quality and clarity of the handwriting in index
books across all decades in all counties, because the people doing the writing were the
same people charged with having to use the indexes to find records without fail.
Nevertheless, there is unavoidable variability in people's abilities to write clearly.
When you just can't be sure of the writing in an index entry, the best thing to do is
to consult the original record to which the index will lead you. Perhaps the writing
will be clearer there.
Keep in mind that, although the index may be typed or written very clearly by hand,
the name may have been misspelled when it was copied to the index because
of trying to read difficult writing on an original document. The people creating indexes
were always instructed not to change spellings from the original documents, but if they
couldn't read what they saw, they'd naturally have to take a guess. If you can't find
an entry in an index that should be there and you know the letters that are frequently
formed similarly, you may have a clue for other spellings you should look for.
If the handwriting in the index is ambiguous you can always check the original record,
but if it is ambiguous or illegible in the record book, there is usually no other place
to check. However, if the record is from before 1906 (Wisconsin) or 1900 (Michigan), the
county will usually have kept the original certificates from which the records you view
were copied. It's sometimes possible to view the original certificate to clarify writing,
when the clerks have ready access to them. (If it's an extremely old marriage certificate
entirely handwritten in prose, there will be no other document; you're looking at the
original or a facsimile of it.) When you can do this, consider yourself lucky. Clerks
will usually tell you that these original certificates contain the same information as
what you see in the register books (this is what the older books of records are called),
but they will get the certificates nevertheless; just explain why you want to see it.
In Saint Croix County, Wisconsin, you are allowed to get the old certificates yourself so
access is unrestricted. In all other counties where the old certificates may be viewed,
clerks must get them for you.
Look here for
examples of the Spencerian Method
of handwriting. This was the style of handwriting used in many old records, and if you
are familiar with how the letters were formed it will be easier for you to read what
you find there.
Death records are always supposed to name the parents of a person and other particulars
about their life, but after the person is dead, they can hardly personally deliver that
or any other information which might have only been in their head. It is common for fields
on a death record to be blank because the informant supplying the personal information on
the deceased doesn't know all the facts. Early records of all types often contain fields
for information which has not been filled in for reasons no longer knowable. When you are
looking at registrations instead of original certificates or copies thereof you can check
to see if the information is on the certificate and just didn't get copied to the
registration book - assuming the certificates are available for inspection - and once in
a great while you will find that missing piece of information. However, in the vast
majority of cases the information is missing on the certificate as well. The clerks were
to faithfully transfer all the information from the certificates to the registration books.
The information for birth certificates is collected almost immediately following birth,
and sometimes the name of the child has not yet been decided upon. In modern times the
parents are absolutely required to supply the name of the newborn as soon as it has
been decided, but long ago the parents were simply given a piece of paper to send in
later, and sometimes they lost it or never bothered to send it in, and there was no
follow-up from the county. Those children are recorded in the index and record only with
the last name, and you can't get the first name from the county records at all. (A
census record may show the child's name.)
If only the last name is recorded, it may also indicate the child died soon after birth.
If the infant died almost immediately, there may be only the birth record with no first
name and no death record. One cannot assume no first name means the child died, though.
Sometimes the first name is not recorded in the index, but if you look at the record
it has been written in. This would indicate the record was amended after the index was
created. Normally both the index and record are updated when a first name is added, but
not always.
Sometimes the maiden name of a mother is not given, whether the mother of a newborn, of
a bride or groom, or of a deceased person. Even though the maiden name will be requested
on the record, the recorder may have written only the first and married names of a
woman. It seems to have depended to a degree on the mindset of the person collecting the
information. Just be glad when a maiden name is given. After the state vital records
system was created the maiden name was nearly always properly recorded. You can look here
for a discussion of
how to find a maiden name
in vital records.
One problematic type of field in all vital record types is the name of a place.
Many towns (townships) contain a city or village of the same name as the town. For decades,
the states have asked the person filling out a record to indicate which is meant by the
placename that is recorded, whether it's a city, village, or town (township), and that
resolves any ambiguity. Unfortunately that designation doesn't apply to all placename
fields even on the records that include it, and in old records people would simply write
down a placename and it's hard to tell which civil division was meant.
If a street address is included then the rest of the placename is probably a city or
village name rather than a township name, but long ago street addresses often weren't
indicated even in cities, and if there is no street address you can't assume that means
it's not the city.
Similarly, sometimes there is a city or town named identically to a county
in the same state. If the record says "Such-and-such Co." you know the county is meant, but
if it says, for example, "La Crosse, WI", and the label for the field is just "birthplace"
instead of "county of birth," you can't automatically assume the City of La Crosse is meant
instead of La Crosse County. If it's a marriage record, see if the fiancee provided a placename
in a parallel field, and see if that placename is definitely a city or definitely a county.
Usually the records give parallel information on a marriage record with the same degree of
specificity, so if one is a county, the other one probably is, too. Otherwise, if the
city or town is in the same county in which the record was created, the name more
than likely refers to the city or town rather than to a different county of the same name. If neither
of those applies, though, you really don't have anything to go on from the record alone; you
can only make supposition based on what seems likely.
The bottom line is, you will have to verify your guess elsewhere when there is any
ambiguity in a placename in order to be completely sure you are resolving the placename
correctly.
Another problem with placenames is that sometimes villages are named that no longer
exist, so you have a hard time finding out what county it is in to go hunt for other
information. Many Web sites list the names of old villages that no longer exist for
various geographical areas, but sometimes you really have to dig or ask for help. If you
can guess at the county, a call to the county office that handles land records may be
helpful, as people who work with those records often have run across the old placenames
and may recognize it. But check other resources first - those people are pretty busy and
depending on who you get may not actually have any helpful information. (Just because they
haven't heard of it doesn't mean it didn't exist in their county anyway.) Old atlases that
include county maps are a good source to help identify old placenames, as well. Again,
there is probably a relevant map for you somewhere in the Internet. Those maps aren't
always golden information, either, though. If it's not on a map, that's only an indication
that the place isn't in that county.
Of course, placenames are often misspelled, and if you haven't heard of it yourself you
can have a devil of a time figuring out just where it is, especially if the state isn't
named, which happens sometimes. If the state isn't named, first try the state of the
record, then try all the bordering states, and if it's not anywhere there - good luck! If
you look long enough and hard enough you'll probably find it, but if the state wasn't
named you'll definitely have to verify it with additional information if you want to be
sure you got the right place.
When people had to give information on their own birthplace or their parents' birthplaces,
they were often uncertain of the location, and so one indication may be given one time,
and a different one another. Usually records are consistent, but especially with birthplaces
of parents, there may be variation. For example, you may see a person give their
birthplace as New York in a couple of their children's birth records, but in their death
record the surviving spouse may give the deceased's birthplace as Vermont. In cases like
this, you just can't be sure of the truth without locating the actual birth record of
the individual in one location or the other, which, of course, may not be easy!
If there is a conflict between vital records, obviously one is right and one is wrong.
If you don't have the conflicting record to look at, you don't even know there is a
problem. If a name is misspelled, you don't know how it was originally spelled except by
preponderance of evidence in other records which you may not have.
The high quality of vital records pertains especially to dates and places of
the events they record in a timely fashion and the names of the people directly
involved. Whenever people are supplying information about themselves which was not
directly observable by the person creating the original record, there is always a chance
for the people to be mistaken or to carelessly supply inadvertently misleading information.
You can pretty much take a marriage date on a marriage record as correct, for example, but
the names of the bride's or groom's parents may not be correct. You would normally assume
a person would know their parent's names, but if the parent died in their childhood and
the other parent had passed away since or was not in attendance at the wedding, a situation
not uncommon in days past, a parent's name given on the marriage certificate could easily
be incorrect. This is why it is always best to verify any information through a second,
independent source. Even that does not prove a fact, but it greatly reduces likelihood of
error.
The tasks you perform in a courthouse are always made easier when everything has been
computerized, and one would think everything would be computerized in the age of
computers since it obviously saves everyone a lot of time including the office personnel.
However, the up-front cost of computerizing even only the indexes is really tremendous
because of the wages that must be paid to people as they laboriously type and double-check
for correctness tens of thousands of names and numbers from the old indexes. Even though
everyone knows a computerized index is best, most counties just don't have the funds to
computerize the records. Many counties have, in fact, adopted computer methods for
recording new records, but the old record information has not been entered into the
computers because of the mass of data that already existed at the time computers first
came on the scene. If you live in a county where indexes are not computerized and available
to the public, volunteer to work on data entry and to get additional volunteer help if the
county will invest in a system! If they can't invest in a system, you or others can enter
the index information into a spreadsheet on your own computer and provide a printed
alphabetical index that will be immensely helpful to everyone. Work with the county
records office to do this, and if they have questions give them the names of other
counties that already have at least partially computerized indexes or scanned records on
computer that anyone can use:
- Brown County, Wisconsin
- Outagamie County, Wisconsin
- Calumet County, Wisconsin
- Ozaukee County, Wisconsin
- Columbia County, Wisconsin
- Dane County, Wisconsin
Doubtless all county offices would love to have computerized or alphabetical printed
indexes! But of course genealogists are a big beneficiary.
To make an estimate of how big a job it would be to type up alphabetical indexes,
assume it would take about 1.5 hours per index page and multiply by the number of pages
in the existing index. The computer will do the sorting for you automatically - all you have to
worry about is the typing. The biggest issue in creating a new typed index is
double-checking to make sure you haven't accidentally mis-typed the volume or page - doing
so creates a big problem. The next biggest is making sure you have read the index entry
correctly. When counties create new indexes themselves, they often go back through the
original record books and re-enter the data directly from them just so as to not introduce
an extra set of copying errors, one set in the copy from the old records to the old index,
one set from the old index to the new index.
Note that the most beneficial thing is to have a fully alphabetical index, whether
it's accessed on a computer or not. Fully alphabetical indexes may be even more
helpful on paper than on the computer because computers aren't good with variant
spellings and misspellings of names, so it's good to have a document you can scan with
your eyes. However, the easiest way by far to create a fully alphabetized index is to
enter all the names into the computer and let the computer do the sorting. From there the
full index can be printed in alphabetical order if desired. Most counties have such
alphabetical indexes for the 1990s and later, but alphabetical indexes, whether accessed
on computer or from paper, are the exception rather than the rule for dates before that.
The Bottom Line
With all the potential problems, you simply can't be sure one will find the information
you expect to find at a courthouse. Nevertheless, if the date of the record is after
1906 (Wisconsin) or 1900 (Michigan) it will probably be there, and even before that
there is a good chance of finding great information. One amazing thing is how fine a
job the counties have done preserving and organizing all the information, year after
year. The easiest place for the system to fail is for a record to be misindexed. After
having looked up over three thousand records spread among all counties in Wisconsin and
upper Michigan, the author has only encountered about four cases of misindexing, and in
all but one case the record was readily located by assuming the page was off by 100 or
that it was within a few pages either way. Kudos to the courthouse clerks and their
supervisors! If they ever seem to be too rigid regarding rules of access to records,
remember that it's that very rigidity regarding rules that has allowed the records to
remain well-organized for over a century and accessible today and into the future. The
people who work in the courthouses know what has to be done, and they do it.