Birth/Death/Marriage Certificates?

Question

Is there a way to get copies of birth/death/and marriage certificates of dead relatives?

I'm working on my genealogy.

I live in Pennsylvania.

Answer 1

The way to get a copy is going to vary by each county and state involved and by the time frame of each record. In most cases, laws were enacted around 1907 requiring records to be kept at the state level. Before that, there may have been records kept; there may not. In New England, the records have always been kept, but in the Midwest, it might be more sporadic.

You can request a copy from the county or state where the record is kept depending on their policy, but you will have to pay for the copy. This can get prohibitively expensive. Some states (like Missouri and North Dakota) have images of some records online. Some records are free to view but you have to go where they are located (or request a "lookup" from someone who lives close by). Some records are archived on microfilm at a history or genealogy center or at the LDS library and you can request a lookup or request the reel you need through interlibrary loan. Still more records have been printed in books or on CD. Ancestry.com has many vital records indexes (not copies of the records, just lists of what records exist with basic data). The county pages at USGenWeb can be a great resource as well.