I recently received a certified copy of my mother's birth certificate. On the name line it reads Mary Lee Croft (handwritten). But then that name is lined out and her real name is hand written above with a date written next to it as 17 years after her birth. The name that appears above is the name my mother has gone by since she was born. She had told me years ago that her parents named her the name she went by (verified by her parents to her), but that the doctor who recorded her birth (she was born at home in the 1920s) did not write down her given name and turned in the name Mary Lee Croft when he submitted the information. She told me she found out about the error in her late teens and had the birth certificate corrected.
So how do I list and cite this? Do I put her given name down and cite it with my personal knowledge, through her, through her parents to her? and then cite something else (what would I call this - legal name change??) and use the birth certificate to cite that?
Thanks in advance for you help!
DoraBud, EE would use both…
DoraBud, EE would use both names in the identification field—as in "Birth Certificate of Jane Doe (hand corrected to Mary Smith on the certified original) ..." Then after the citation, an explanation would be valuable.