This post may contain affiliate links. Please see our disclosure policy.
How to find an ancestor’s birth date is a common genealogy question. Use these 8 alternative genealogy records to determine your ancestor was born.
You are diligently researching your ancestor. You know he exists. In fact you know quite a bit about his later life. But you are stuck. You are unable to find a birth record or birth date for him.
No nice formal birth certificate can be found. Not even a delayed birth certificate!
Raise your hand if this has happened to you. I’m raising my mine!
It’s frustrating, but determining the birth date of your ancestor does not have to be an unsolvable genealogy problem. We just have to approach our research from a different angle.
We are familiar with the traditional birth certificate research. We use those for documenting the birth date of an ancestor, their parents’ names, and their location in time. But you do not have to go too far back in your research timeline to a point when formal birth records were not required.
In North Carolina birth certificates were not required until 1913. Even then, compliance with documenting a child’s birth was not consistent until the beginning of the first world war.
The question in your research very quickly becomes…
How do you determine an ancestor’s birth date in the absence of a birth certificate?
Fortunately, other documents can be used to determine an ancestor’s birth date. Before you head off to the archives or start your online research though, set yourself up for success by knowing the background of the area where your ancestor was born (or possibly born if you are not sure).
Do not search for records that do not exist!
You will save yourself a lot of time and frustration if you do preliminary research on the location of your ancestors.
When did birth records began being recorded in the location your ancestor was born? If your ancestor was born in North Carolina in 1910, do not look for a birth certificate. This will save you time from searching for a record that does not exist. No genealogy researcher has time for that.
Did any record losses occur in the are you are researching? Unfortunately, fires and natural disasters have destroyed many of our ancestors’ records. Before you begin research into your ancestor’s birth record (or any record), check to see if the county or state has had any major record loss. If so, make a note for which years. If the record loss corresponds with your time frame, you will know what does and does not exist.
8 Alternative Sources To Find Your Ancestor’s Birth Date
A formal birth record may not be found for your ancestor, but you can deduce the birth year/date or at least narrow down the date by using other records.
Let’s take a look:
1.The Family Bible
Ok, I know….you are thinking “We don’t have a family Bible.” I said the same thing when I started, only it wasn’t true. I discovered a copy of the family Bible in a relative’s possession.
When searching for your own family’s Bible, ASK!
Ask your close relatives.
Ask your distant relatives.
Query Facebook genealogy groups/pages for the area or family you are researching.
No cousin is too distant in relationship or physical distance to have information on your family’s ancestors. (I’m stepping off of my soap box now!)
Another possible source to find family Bibles is your state archives and/or state library. For example, if you have North Carolina ancestors, check the North Carolina Family Records Online.
2.Church and Baptismal Records
Your ancestors often recorded births and baptisms in church records. Seek out the possible churches your ancestor may have attended and determine where (or if) their records exists.
3.Census Records
The post 1850 census records are a source for your ancestor’s birth. Some census years provide a month and year and some simply the year or just the age of the individual. From there you can narrow down your ancestor’s birth year. The pre-1850 census records require more in-depth analysis to narrow down a range for the birth date, but are an important source when used with other records. Check out these other posts for more on analyzing census records:
- How to Make Genealogy Sense of Census Records – Census Records Part 1
- How to Make Sense of Those Tick Marks on Pre-1850 Census Records – Census Records Part 2
4.Death certificates
Death certificates usually provide the birth date (if it is known by the informant). Be careful here, though. Who was the informant for the information on the death certificate? Consider if the individual was someone who knew the deceased well and would have known the birth information with certainty. Or did the informant have a more distant connection?
5.Wills
Is your ancestor named in their parent’s will? If the deceased left minor children, you may find them listed as such in the will. You will not likely find an actual age or birth date, but knowing the individual was a minor in a specific year (i.e. the date the will was written) can help you narrow down his/her birth date.
6.Guardianship records
These may be found in the parent’s estate records and/or in court records. (These are some of my favorite records!) First, you must know the laws surrounding guardianship in the state you are researching. Your state archive librarians are great resources here. Under what age was a child considered a minor? Most commonly for males, it was 21 years of age. Females could be 16 or 18. Guardianship papers may state the age of the child or simply imply the age.
If you find a guardian named for your ancestor, your next step is to search out the guardian account records. Each year the guardian was required to make an account of what spent to take care to the minor child. Records should indicate, too, when the guardianship ended indicating the child was then of legal age. If 21 was the age of legality, then you can simply subtract 21 from the year guardianship ended and determine the birth year.
7.Sexton records/gravestones
Do you know where your ancestor(s) was buried? Is there a gravestone or is the stone no longer readable? Worse, does the stone only list the name and no dates? Check the cemetery records/sexton records. If the cemetery is large enough to have its own office, call and inquire. I have encountered some of the most helpful people doing this. If the cemetery is small, you may need to contact the local town management to determine who is in charge of the cemetery and where those particular records are kept.
8.Tax records
Yes, you can narrow down an individual’s birth year using tax records.
The key here is to know the tax laws for the time period your ancestor lived. Learn who was taxed and what they were taxed on. For example, in 1784 in North Carolina, freeman and male servants over 21 years were taxed. Under 21 they were not taxed. Tax laws came and went, so be sure you understand why he is (or is not) appearing in the record. Follow your ancestor through the tax records and determine when he appears and disappears in the tax records.
Just because your ancestor did not have a birth certificate, does not mean you can not determine their date of birth. Sometimes you may only be able to determine a date range by a preponderance of evidence.
That’s okay.
In the process you will have learned more about your ancestor, who he/she associated with and the community in which they lived. You will have also gained new skills and insights for future research projects on your family.
Have an Ancestor’s Birth Certificate Already?
You are one of the lucky ones and found an actual birth certificate for your ancestor. Make sure you are not missing any potential family history clues it holds.
🤔Stuck trying to find an elusive ancestor? Ready to stop the aimless search of the genealogy databases that leaves you frustrated and still NO results?
Check out the VIP Genealogy Intensive Day where we focus on getting your genealogy research back on track with a day dedicated just to Y-O-U. 😊
Other Genealogy Posts of Interest!
My mom had a daughter between 1940 -1945.
I am researching to find her. She was adopted out. I know it can be done because my sister found it. She has has passed and I don’t know where she had it. So is there anything I can do to find it.
That can be difficult for sure. I haven’t had much experience researching adoption. I recommend reaching out to genealogy groups on FB to get their best suggestions.
My mother was born in Hampton South Carolina in 1952. She has never had a birth certificate. She has even went to the vital records office and they show no known records for her BUT have every sibling before(1) and every after(5). There are listed Census for her parents last dates in 1950.
That is really interesting and unusual! I have seen the occasional person born that late without a birth certificate. That can definitely cause some headaches later in life.
Hi Lisa,
This is a valuable transcript and a wide-ranging thread with good comments. I am researching and writing a family history of my Grant lineage in southwestern Nova Scotia, beginning about 1755. We tended to stick to four of the five counties of that region. Then, beginning in the 1840s or so, we spread out to New England, mainly to Essex, Suffolk, Middlesex, Norfolk, and a few other counties of eastern Massachusetts. I have found our Nova Scotia and New Brunswick archives to be very helpful in finding birth records for many, if not most of my ancestors. Sometimes the answer is not there because there was no law requiring it, or the relative just did not report the birth, even into the 20th century. Census records are useful, especially our 1901 census that recorded a specific date of birth and the 1911 census that gave month and year. I have found few family Bibles, but have recorded several references to them for future research. County histories have sometimes provided a list of names and births for a certain area. Local newspapers, when available, can be a good source of birth announcements. I have found the New England records as shared by Ancestry and FamilySearch to be valuable (of course). I also belong to three genealogical associations that have been great helps. The key, as you say, is to keep digging. Finally, I have found that the level of literacy can be an impediment to understanding provincial/state legal requirements, especially for birth records. Then, the distance between birth and a census can stump even a Mom who might remember the year and month but not the day, or have the latter two numbers but get the year wrong.
Did anyone mentions wedding registrations? I’ve rambled so long that I forget. And let’s not leave out naturalization documents!
Thank you for your friendly, accessible and professional approach to genealogy.
Allen Grant
Ottawa, Ontario
My husband’s ancestor, Louis Henry Champ, is my brick wall. Judging by all the people I’ve found on different sites trying to get past him; I’m not alone. I have multiple records saying he was born in GA, 1804 and a census record that says his mother was born in GA and his father in VA. Plenty of records in IL and a marriage record for TN. I also have a 5th cousin DNA match to several descendents of William Champ of Paint Lick, KY. I’ve researched W Champ and found records of all his children, including a will where he leaves something to each one. No mention of LH Champ anywhere. No record of W Champ in TN or GA. W Champ came to KY with his father from WV.
I have found by searching census records, 3 other Champ boys born in GA between 1800 and 1810, who also married girls in TN. They are not listed as W Champ’s sons either. I have also found a couple tax records for GA for 2 different Champ’s, John and William in GA. How do I figure out which is correct?
I have my 2nd great grandfather’s birth, marriage, and death dates, but cannot find something that links him to his parents. The Town Clerk’s home in the town that they lived at the time of his birth burned down and everything for that time frame was lost. I found a marriage intentions record and newspaper notice, but no parents listed. I reached out to that Town’s Historical Society which was really helpful and they found no baptismal records or school records, although it was interesting to find out that my 3rd Great Grandfather was one of those who worked on getting a school established and he sent two children to it at the time (2 years prior to my 2nd great grandfather’s birth). I have also contacted the cemetery director where he was buried to see if there was any information on his burial records and come up empty. I would love any suggestions that anyone could offer. Thank you.