A term common in American English for birth, marriage and death records created, or held, by recognized authorities. In British and Australian English, the preferred term is BMD records. May be extended to include records of other key life events, such as adoption or divorce.

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Birth or adoption record for adopted ancestor

My great-great-grandmother Leona was born in the early 1860s. She was adopted as a young child (we think less than five years old) when her mother died; her father was apparently unfit in some ...
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Provenance of Cook County death indexes

Ancestry.com has two indexes for deaths in Cook County: Ancestry.com. Cook County, Illinois Death Index, 1908-1988 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2008. ...
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When did Abraham Decker (b. 1839) die?

Abraham Decker was born on 12 Sep 1839 in Gauersheim, in the Pfalz region of Bavaria. He emigrated to the United States in 1859. (Although he was born in the Pfalz and not in Hesse which is shown as ...
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How old *are* these people?

I have found records of the Axel family I am researching in several censuses. In addition, I have death records for both Peter and Sarah, the mother and father of the family. Below I present, in ...
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Where can I search for elusive vital records (birth, names of parents, death) for my great grandmother, Celina Drollet?

Celina/Salina Drollet (or Drowlette,Drolet,Draulette,Drollette,etc) (b. abt 1866) and James Comstock (b. 1874) were the parents of my grandmother Mary Amelia Comstock (b. Mar 1897 Saranac, NY). ...
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Seemingly missing NYC birth records

EDIT: Correctected Sidney's birth I am looking for birth records for the children of David Nechemias and Etta Ehrensaal. From census records, I have Beatrice (b. abt 1897), Helen (b. abt 1904), ...
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What kind of information is in this record?

I am looking at civil records (BMD) from the late 18th-early 19th century from Morschheim the Pfalz region of (then) Bavaria, and I see several instances of images like this (top part shown): It ...
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Where are the NYC vital records on FamilySearch?

In an answer to a question about New York records, efgen said: The NYC birth index is actually available through 1965 on microfilm. However, only the indexes through 1909 are currently available ...
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Hunting for Robert Whyte b. 1846 in Scotland

I am hunting for Robert Whyte, b. 26 Sept 1846 possibly in Methven, Scotland. He wrote he was "from" Methven in his Ontario, Canada wedding license. But maybe he was born elsewhere, possibly Stirling. ...
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Which Australian collections should I search to find a person by her maiden name?

My great grandfather had four sisters, maiden name Belostotsky (Belostotskaya), who had lived in Berlin some time between 1900 and 1920, and subsequently emigrated. Three went to the US, one went to ...
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New York State vital records collections

I had the good fortune to start my online genealogical searching on people who lived in Chicago, and then moved to California. Both Ancestry.com and Family Search web sites provide a number of ...
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Tracing Jewish ancestors in Germany before 1800

I have been able to trace my wife's ancestors to people born in the 1790s in the Pfalz region of Germany and in Alsace using civil records of births and deaths. Those records books were started in the ...