Hospital Birth Certificate

By Anonymous on Fri, 06/06/2014 - 15:46

Forums

I could not decide whether this question belongs in the Citation Issues forum or the Evidence Analysis Issues forum. For better or worse I decided to post it here.

I have a Hospital Birth Certificate for a living person that was passed on to that person by the parents. The certificate names the child, provides the time, date, and place of birth, contains the baby’s footprint, and is signed by both the Superintendent of the hospital and the Attending Physician. It also has a Corporate Seal affixed to it. The document also contains a family history (father’s full name, residence, date, and place of birth, mother’s maiden name, date, and place of birth, and the date and place of marriage of the parents.)

Much as I would like to cite this document using a vital record format for a birth record, I anticipate that EE will say that this is a commemorative certificate and needs to be cited as Privately Held material following 3.25. Given that this certificate contains more information than many vital records I have found, I would be very happy to be told that my assumption is wrong!

Based on this assumption, I believe the appropriate form for the Reference note citation is:

Jane Smith hospital birth certificate, Madison General Hospital, Madison, Wisconsin, 18 MONTH, YEAR; privately held by Jane Smith, [ADDRESS FOR PRIVATE USE,] Bostic, North Carolina. This certificate was presented to the parents of Jane Smith at the time of her birth by Madison General Hospital, and was passed to Jane Smith when she became an adult.

(I have disguised the name and date for this purpose because “Jane Smith” is living.)

My other question has to do with the information about the birth. Given the source of the information is the hospital where she was born, the fact that it contains the baby’s footprint attesting to the timeliness of the information, and the fact that the document is signed by the attending physician, I believe that I am justified in evaluating this document as being an original source that I judge to contain primary information about the birth of Jane Smith, providing direct evidence as to the date and place of birth. Am I using the guidance of the Resource Process Map appropriately, or am I missing something?

Thanks!
Tom

Submitted bycclarkon Fri, 06/06/2014 - 23:13

I agree that the Hospital Birth Certificate is a primary source.  Tom doesn't note the year/age of the certificate so what I'm about to write here may not be accurate for the year this certificate was written. This is a simplified version of the birth certificate process. In Illinois, hospitals must complete a birth certificate worksheet and the birth certificate. Both of which are transmitted (given) to the State for recording.  The worksheet is completed by hospital staff using hospital medical record information and information obtained from the birth mother. The birth certificate worksheet is permanently retained by the hospital.  So, the source of the State birth certificate is, in fact the information provided by the hospital.  There is a similar process in many other states.  This process has been in place for many years.

My source for this process is personal information.  I have been in healthcare for over 30 years and in hospital administration for more than half of that time.

Thanks, Christine, for the perspective on the creation process. That process also existed in the state and time in which my own children were born. Like you, I suspect that is true for many others. Still, many researchers who seek birth certificates often forget that the hospital version—rather than the state-office or county-health office version—is likely to be the original.

I have been contemplating your response since I first read it. As we proceed along our journey of learning how to do genealogical research, we are continually reminded to "look for the original record" wherever possible. When I looked at the hospital birth certificate that prompted the original posting, my immediate thought was that this is probably the original from which the "official" birth record(s) were prepared. It doesn't get much better than this!

But then I realized that the reason I have this document is that it was given to the parents by the hospital at the time of the birth, and has been preserved by the family, which is how I got access to it. You said "... many researchers who seek birth certificates often forget that the hospital version—rather than the state-office or county-health office version—is likely to be the original." Given privacy concerns, I wonder whether a researcher would be able to get  access to these records, assuming they (still) exist, unless they are lucky enough to find them in family records - a source is often not available to us.

(As an aside, I decided to see whether I have anything like this for my own children. I quickly discovered that there is nothing in my file of "official" documents. I found the equivalent of the certificate pasted in their Baby Book, where I am sure we put it all those years ago because it was a "neat remembrance" and not an official document we should file away properly!)

Tom