Special thanks to Mary Hatton (transcription), Jerry Taylor (formatting), Suzanne Shepherd (extraction) and all other KyArch file managers who worked on getting this information organized, distributed and available for our genealogical research web sites.
Kentucky started keeping birth and death
records in 1852, stopped in 1862, started again in 1874, but did not mandate
this information be kept until 1 January 1911. Before that date, births and
deaths were recorded at the county level and copies were forwarded to the state
each year. Surviving birth records are mostly for the years 1852-1861, 1874-1879
and 1900-1910. Due to official indifference regarding record keeping statewide,
a lot of births were not recorded for many of the years before 1911. (The
records for 1874-1879 have been indexed for the entire state. That index is
available at KDLA.)
People lacking official certificates were able to file
delayed birth certificates with the state. This became common due to the
requirements of the newly formed Social Security Administration and military
service. According to Roseann Hogan, "Kentuckians have filed over a
half-million of these delayed certificates... Social Security, for a time,
accepted completed certificates that were not filed with the Department of Vital
Statistics in Frankfort. Therefore, it is possible, that even if no official
certificate can be found in Frankfort, a certificate may have been filed with
Social Security or other government agencies." (Ref: Kentucky Ancestry,
page 79) Delayed birth certificates contain name, age, date of birth,
place of birth, sex, race, parents' names, which is similar to regular birth
certificates. Plus two older witnesses, one related one unrelated.
Alphabetized Surname Lists for Jefferson County
A - G
| H - O
| P - Z
FTP file access for Jefferson County
Delayed Birth Records for Kentucky
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