Find your ancestors in United States, Early American vital records indexes

What can these records tell me?

Discover vital information about your ancestors in the United States from the 1600s to the 1800s. This large collection includes many birth, marriage, and death registers, as well as publications detailing the military dead of the American Revolutionary War and their military service details.

Results provide a transcript and an image of the original source material. Transcripts include the following details:

  • First name(s)
  • Last name
  • Sex
  • Marriage year
  • Principal’s first name(s)
  • Principal’s last name
  • Relationship
  • Spouse’s first name(s)
  • Spouse’s last name
  • Event type
  • Event year
  • Event date
  • Event place
  • State

Images will often include additional biographical details and provide insight into early American history, such as the records from Biographical Data from Baltimore Newspapers, 1817-1819, which offers, in addition to vital statistics, 'data on estates, runaway servants, apprentices, wives, and soldiers. Information on executors or administrators selling property, notices seeking the whereabouts of lost relatives, places of burial (where known), and in the case of foreign-born decedents, information pertaining to their naturalization […] A separate section was included for people with just one name. These were not just slaves, but occasionally indentured servants'.