Official Records
| Birth Year | Information |
|---|---|
| Births before 1908 | There was no official statewide registration of births and deaths in Tennessee before 1908. |
| Births 1908 – 1912 | These records were kept across the state by clerks in each Tennessee county.They have been microfilmed and are available at the Tennessee State Library & Archives. Searches can also be requested by mail. |
| Births & Deaths 1913 | The law requiring birth & death registration expired in 1913, and no records were recorded for that year. |
| Births 1914 – Present | These records are available from the State of Tennessee Office of Vital Records. |
| Delayed Birth Records | When the Social Security Administration was created in 1935, the agency asked for birth certificates as proof the applicant qualified for entry into the program. Most Tennesseans who wished to apply, however, were born prior to the 1908 law that first required the keeping of birth certificates.Beginning in 1935, Tennessee began to issue Delayed Birth Certificates. These certificates were not issued automatically; the applicant had to request the record from the state, and must supply supporting documents or letters.Searches of the Delayed Birth Certificates for birth years 1869-1909 can be requested by e-mail, if you can provide Tennessee State Library & Archives with specified information: name of the individual, an approximate date or year of birth, the county of birth (if known), and (if known) the name of the mother.
Delayed birth records for the birth years 1911 on are held by the Office of Vital Records, Tennessee Department of Health. |
Tips when searching for your ancestor’s birth record
The following are tips you might try when searching for your ancestor’s birth record, where he or she was born before 1908:
| 1 | Make sure there isn’t a “delayed birth record” on file. (check info in the box above) |
| 2 | Obtain a copy of your ancestor’s official death record. I believe that the death records always asked for a birthplace. Sometimes you might be lucky and have a specific town or place, other times it might just say the state and still other times it might be blank. |
| 3 | If you have obtained a copy of the official death record and it notes a funeral home, contact that funeral home. Many times funeral homes kept their own records which often contained more information than the state required. |
| 4 | Check every federal and state census record that your ancestor was enumerated in. Most times in the federal records, the birthplaces are usually indicated as the state only. But sometimes in state census records, the birthplace may be indicated as a town. |
If anyone else has other ideas on substitute birth records, please email your county coordinator.
User – Submitted Records
These are births which are from some type of printed source, whether it be the family Bible, the copy of the birth record or even the copy of their death record. If you have a birth record that you would like to share (where the person was born from 1930 or before), please contact your Perry County TnGenWeb coordinator.
| Name of Person | Date of Birth | Submitted by | Date Submitted |
|---|---|---|---|
| Conder, Annie | 14 May (1912?) | Sandy Daniel | 11 Mar 2009 |
| Daniel, Clint | 1909 | Sandy Daniel | 28 July 2008 |
| Daniel, Lillie Mae | 01 July 1912 | Sandy Daniel | 29 Feb 2008 |
| Daniel, Mary Louise | 15 May 1912 | Sandy Daniel | 29 Feb 2008 |
| Daniel, Raymond Nelson | 16 May 1910 | Sandy Daniel | 19 July 2008 |
| Daniel, William H | 20 May 1909 | Sandy Daniel | 19 July 2008 |
| Twilla, Mary | 09 Oct 1909 | Sandy Daniel | 19 July 2008 |
6 Replies to “Birth Records”