Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Vermont Vital Records 1909 to 2008 on Ancestry.com

http://www.ancestry.com/ has added several NEW United States databases in the past week, including:

* U.S. Federal Census - 1880 Schedules of Defective, Dependent, and Delinquent Classes

* Vermont Birth Records, 1909-2008
* Vermont Marriage Records, 1909-2008
* Vermont Death Records, 1909-2008

* Connecticut Divorce Index, 1968-1997

Those are the first real United States records added (not updated) since Delaware births, marriage and death records over one month ago.

I was eager to look at the Vermont databases because they hold the promise of adding significant content to my Seaver database. Here is the search result for "Seaver" in the Vermont Births 1909-2008 database:



There are 126 entries in the Births database alone. I have many Vermont Seaver families gleaned from census records and Social Security Death Index, but these databases will help my "Seaver surname collection" tremendously.

I clicked on one of the entries down the list - for Allen Wendell Seaver, born in 1919 and saw the familiar record summary for him:



I clicked on the "View record image" and saw:


There is a significant amount of information on this registration card, including:

* Town or city = Williamstown
* Name of child = Allen Wendell Seaver
* Date of birth: Month = Dec, Day = 15, Year = 1919
* Full name of father = Guy R. Seaver
* Residence = Williamstown
* Color = White
* Age = 27
* Birthplace = Williamstown Vt
* Occupation = Farmer
* Maiden Name of mother = Inez Belle Poor
* Residence = Williamstown
* Color = White
* Age = 26
* Birthplace = Williamstown Vt
* No. of children born to this mother, including present birth = 2
* No. of children of this mother now living = 2
* Condition of child as to live or still birth = Live (Still crossed out)
* Name of Informant = E.H. Bailey
* Address = Graniteville, Vt

Besides the child's name, birth date and birthplace, the mother's maiden name was new for me (I only had Inez B. from a census record) and her birthplace was new for me also.

I kept my FTM 16 database open while I was browsing through the Vermont births, and used two open windows to enter data directly from the Vermont birth record into the database entry for the child:


Lastly, I took the source citation from the record and input it into the source field in the database for the birth of Allen Wendell Seaver. I wonder if he is still alive? I guess I'll find out in the Vermont death records, assuming he still lives in Vermont.
Now - what about the Vermont vital records for the 1800 to 1908 time period? There are similar cards on microfilm in the Family History Library collection. If those were imaged and indexed, it would probably be the best vital record collection of any state in the USA.
It's been a fun day finding cemetery stones on web pages and now I have about 12 hours of data entry to put these Vermont records into my Seaver database.

3 comments:

Barbara Poole said...

So Randy, what am I going to do with 700 marriage records for Westover? Cheer. I am so happy about this, and after a very long time, I can say I am happy with Ancestry too. Thanks so much for posting this. Your happy cousin.

Cathi at Stone House Research said...

Just a reminder that these are derivative records. They are index cards with information copied from the original records. Still great to have!

Anonymous said...

These index cards are what Vermont considers to be there public vital records. If you go to the town hall you will find the exact same thing.