Where to find County Vital Records for Free

County vital records are one of the most sought after pieces of genealogical information. Vital records are the official records left behind by your ancestors as they moved through life. These are the “facts” about your ancestor – when and where they were born, when and where they got married, when and where they died, and where they were buried.

Most often, these types of records were kept at the county level in the state where you ancestor resided. County vital records are a gold mine of information and usually regarded as fairly accurate information. There are several places you can look in order to find county vital records.

The first step is to check out the USGenWeb site. Every county in the United States has a page that is updated by volunteers. A lot of these have vital records that were transcribed and posted for you online. If you can’t find anything at USGenWeb, then do a quick web search to locate the homepage of the county where your ancestor lived. See if you can locate a genealogy research section on their site or at the very least a contact person in the County Recorder’s office to ask what records they might have. Once you find out what records are available, then you can go and do research in person.

The next place to check is the website for the local library in your county of interest. You can usually search the library’s card catalog online. You might find that some county vital records have been transcribed and published in a book or are available on microfilm. If you can’t travel to the library, you may be able to ask the librarian to do a  quick lookup or perhaps even someone from Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness. Sometimes you can ask the local genealogy society for research help but they may charge a small fee. You can also try using Inter Library Loan but sometimes the books that have transcribed vital records in them aren’t available for ILL.

If you are really stuck, you might want to try the free 14-day trial at Ancestry.com. They have a tremendous amount of vital records to search. Two weeks is a long time and you can do a lot of research before canceling.

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