Birth death and marriage certificate

Introduction

When the Constitution of the United States was finally adopted by the thirteen states of the Articles of Confederation, the new federal government had no power to collect direct personal income taxes from each citizen or to record their births and deaths except once every ten years (in conjunction with the decennial census which was required to determine the apportionment of congressmen in the House of Representatives). "There was not the remotest idea in the minds of the framers of the Constitution as to the necessity of a complete record of vital statistics ... ." Even among the States at that time, there was little concern for the official, civil registration of births and deaths. As one commentator noted during the 1860s, it was probably impossible for a large portion of the American populace to prove that they were ever born, that "their parents were ever married, and that they have any legitimate right to the name they bear, ... ."Yet today, nearly every person has a state-issued birth certificate. The constitutional directive for the decennial census has been expanded to such an extent that serious consideration is now being given to assigning a federal identification number to each and every citizen and resident alien. How did we, in the United States, move from the point where very few of our ancestors were concerned about even having a record of their births (much less having a public official make that record) to the point where we are ready to accept a government number to identify us? The main purpose of this article is to answer that question by presenting an overview of the evolution of government-mandated birth and death certificates in the United States.

In the Beginning

When the colonists that settled at Jamestown, Virginia and Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts arrived in North America, there already existed a history of birth and death registration in the older European countries. For example, in 1538, Lord Thomas Cromwell had ordered that the English parishes be responsible for keeping registers to record baptisms and burials. However, since the Puritans and Pilgrims took the view that marriage was a civil event, rather than a religious one, they held that the registration of births and deaths should be a government responsibility, rather than an ecclesiastical one. Therefore, in 1639 the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony ordered that births and deaths should be reported to the town clerk by parents or household owners within one month of their occurrence. Thus Massachusetts holds the record for being

the first state in the Christian world which recorded births, deaths, and marriages by government officers;... the first state in the world which recorded the dates of the actual facts of births, deaths, and marriages rather than the subsequent ecclesiastical ceremonies of baptisms, burials, and weddings; and ... the first state in the world which imposed on the citizen the duty of giving notice to the government of all births, [d]eaths, and marriages occurring in his family.

The Connecticut colony followed suit in 1644, and the New Plymouth colony did likewise in 1646. John Locke, in his "Fundamental Constitutions" for the government of the Carolinas, which was prepared in 1669, made provision for a "Registry in every Signiory, Barony, and Colony, wherein shall be recorded all the births, marriages, and deaths that shall happen."

During the 18th Century, there was little concern on the part of American governments, either federal or state, for the recording of vital statistics. In 1785, James Madison proposed a law in the Virginia Assembly which would have created a system of statewide birth and death registration.

It was defeated in the Virginia Senate. Similarly, on the federal level, under the North West Ordinance of 1787 there was no provision for the registration of births and deaths. Only marriages were required to be recorded within three months. New York City first recorded deaths officially in 1803, but it was not until 1847 that the city began recording births and marriages. Very few people, except the most wealthy, who were concerned with their legal inheritance, had any real interest in official public records. Until the last half of the 19th Century, the recording of births, deaths, and marriages was generally considered either a semi-religious or social function. Such events, if they were recorded at all, were more likely to either be entered in a family's Bible, or a church register, than registered by a clerk in a government office.

It was largely the development of the public health movement and the advancements of medical science which propelled the demand for official vital statistics in the United States. What little collection of records of births and deaths there was among the states of the federal union, there certainly was no uniform method in their collection. As one historian put it, "Only as European nations created efficient mechanisms in the course of the nineteenth century did the uncoordinated condition of American state registration begin to reveal the extent of its shortcomings." For example, the English Parliament had passed a registration law in 1836, which provided for the collection of vital statistics. The legislature of Massachusetts followed suit in 1842. However it was almost three decades later before any state in the Union had an official Board of Health (Massachusetts in 1869), and before the American Public Health Association was founded (1872). In the beginning, state laws that concerned themselves with vital statistics usually concentrated on the collection of records of death, which included such information as the place and cause of death. With that information public health doctors and sanitary engineers could enumerate the variety of sicknesses, infectious diseases, and epidemics and begin to scientifically study their causes, containment, and control.

The States justified such activities under their police powers of providing for the public's health, safety, welfare, the prevention and detection of crime, and the need to collect data for sanitary purposes and analysis. Lewis Hockheimer, in his 1897 article on "Police Power" in the CENTRAL LAW JOURNAL, noted that "The police power is the inherent plenary power of a State ... to prescribe regulations to preserve and promote the public safety, health, and morals, and to prohibit all things hurtful to the comfort and welfare of society." The constitutional basis of such state power was found in the Tenth Amendment, which reserved to the states all powers not explicitly delegated or prohibited in the Constitution. Firefighting regulations, quarantine laws, weights and measures, inspection of flour, meal, beef and pork, control laws over strong liquors, and recordation of vital statistics: in short, "no aspect of human intercourse remained outside the purview of" the police power if it could be justified as beneficial to the happiness and welfare of the state's citizenry.

The Registration Area

In 1880, the Federal Bureau of the Census initiated a national registration area for the uniform collection of death statistics in order to provide a scientific basis for the study of public health problems in the States. The registration "area" was simply all or part of a State (such as a major city within the State) which complied with the federal guidelines for the collection of death statistics. In order to qualify for admission into the national registration area a State or municipality had to comply with two requirements. First it had to pass a satisfactory law and implement a suitable system for death registration, and secondly, it had to attain at least a 90% rate of completeness in recording deaths within its geographic boundaries. Wilson G. Smillie in his book on PUBLIC HEALTH ADMINISTRATION IN THE UNITED STATES discusses the evolution of modern registration:

Various checks [we]re used by the Federal Census Bureau to determine whether a given state ha[d] fulfilled all requirements. The national registration area began with Massachusetts and New Jersey, the District of Columbia, and nineteen cities. Gradually the various states were admitted by the Federal Census Bureau so that every state is now included in the National Registration Area for Deaths. The National Birth Registration Area was established in 1915. Criteria for admission were similar to those required for admission to the death registration area. All states have met the federal requirements, though a few states have difficulty in maintaining the national registration standards. This formation of national registration areas marks one of the progressive steps in public health administration in the United States. It was brought about through formulation of a model registration law which was first presented to the official Association of Public Health Officers and approved by it. This model law had gradually been adopted by the various states.