Self Help

Vital records offer the most immediate source of trustworthy genealogical information. By definition, vital records are official registrations of birth, marriage, and death certificates. These are information that local and state governmental agencies are required by law to keep. They also often include data on parents.

Over the years, the definition of vital records has been broadened to include church registers, cemetery inscriptions, and diary notations of the births, marriages, and deaths that occurred in a particular community. Most of the published vital records incorporate such unofficial information.

However, you must be wary of accepting such information as fact. Even such highly touted sources as cemetery inscriptions can be misleading if interpreted incorrectly. For instance, in some volumes of published Massachusetts vital records, it was customary to take the dates of birth from gravestones or calculate them from death dates listing ages, then add the data among the town births, whether or not the individual was actually born there.