Legacy QuickGuide: Understanding US Vital Records by Sharon Atkins (PDF Edition)

The Understanding US Vital Records Legacy QuickGuide™ offers an overview of how the collection of vital records (births, marriages and deaths) evolved; definitions of the various vital records; descriptions of the important genealogical information to be found within each of the vital records; how jurisdictions vary in the rules and regulation for obtaining copies of vital record and listings of where to locate copies of what we think of as today’s vital records (birth, marriage, divorce and death). This handy 4-page PDF guide can be used on your computer or mobile device for anytime access.

Church records provide much of the genealogical and vital statistical information about our American ancestor’s births, marriages and deaths from the early 1600’s to the mid-1800’s; after which we can find the existence of non-church vital records. While US Vital Records are considered by some to be too recent to use as evidence of an ancestor’s life, savvy genealogy researchers regard vital records to be rich in clues as well as sources to retrieve date, relationship and event location information.