We’ve all encountered the problem of the absence of a birth certificate. In those cases, we have to search for alternative record sources that help document the birth. This can be an excruciating process or one that turns out to be fairly straight-forward.

It occurred to me recently that both of my parents had to perform genealogical research in order to document their births. You see, my father was born in North Carolina in 1909 and my mother was born in Georgia in 1911. Neither was born at a time when registration of births was mandatory and so they did not have birth certificates.