The Vital Research Records Project is a collaborative venture between the West Virginia State Archives and the Genealogical Society of Utah (GSU) to place online via the West Virginia Archives and History Web site selected West Virginia county birth, death and marriage records, and statewide death records in a viewable, downloadable and searchable format. The project is on-going, with more records being added when possible and the system undergoing refinement as needed. In Virginia/West Virginia, births and deaths were first reported to the counties in 1853, while marriages were recorded in the counties from the inception of each county. All three types of records are still reported to county clerks today. In 1917, the West Virginia Dept. of Health Vital Registration office began collecting the county reports of births and deaths and issuing official state certificates. The records made available online in the Vital Research Records Project come from both sources: county records as recorded on microfilm by the Genealogical Society of Utah largely in the 1960's and 1970's, and statewide records as selected for release by the West Virginia Dept. of Health Vital Registration office.

State death certificates for individuals from all 55 counties dating from 1917 through 1954 are currently available online through this project. Additional death certificates will be added in a batch once a year as the certificates pass the 50-year mark of issuance. For example, in 2006 the death certificates for 1955 will be added to the database. The addition of state birth certificates and of state delayed birth certificates to the database are not anticipated at any time in the future. (Some delayed births may show up in the regular county birth records.)

Six counties are included in the initial database for birth, death and marriage records: Calhoun, Gilmer, Hardy, Harrison, Mineral and Pendleton. For these six counties marriage and death records are included up to the last record microfilmed for that county by GSU: Calhoun, Gilmer, and Mineral through 1969; Hardy, Harrison and Pendleton through 1970. For these six counties birth records are included up through 1930. Due to a change in the selection parameters since the initial records were chosen for inclusion, when subsequent counties are added only births recorded in those counties more than 100 years ago will be included, meaning currently only births for 1853 through 1905 will be made available, with additional births added some time after the records pass the 100-year mark.

The records are not fully transcribed and are searchable only by the information requested in the search boxes for each type of record. The county records are double-paged records, so if the record you want is not visible on the first page shown on the screen, scroll right or left to the adjacent page to find your record. We are aware that the images are over-sized and that a user must scroll up and down, left and right, to view the entire record, and we are trying to address the situation in hopes of making the images a more convenient size. Before notifying the Archives of any problem encountered in downloading and printing, please fully explore all of your options on your own computer first.

Regarding West Virginia state death certificates, a group of 1920 death certificates, #4501 through #5000, are not available. Sometime after the deaths for1920 were indexed, but before the record books themselves were transferred to the State Archives, that certificate book was lost. The names of the persons and the certificate numbers were entered into the Vital Research Records database, but there will be no accompanying images. Although the Dept. of Health and the State Archives do not have copies of these particular death certificates, the relevant county courthouses should be able to provide them. The Archives and History Library has county records on microfilm for the use of its patrons, and also can provide copies by mail in response to mailed research requests that enclose a $5.00 fee for in-state requests, or a $15.00 fee for out-of-state requests. (Please note that only the county that issued the certificate can provide a certified copy for legal purposes.)

You may notice some dates earlier than 1853 for county births and deaths. These are either delayed records accepted by the clerks, or are errors. We have been correcting transcription errors as we find them; however, we can not correct errors in the original records, only errors made in the transcription and indexing process. To correct errors in the original information recorded by a county clerk or by the Dept. of Health, researchers must contact the relevant agency. To report transcription or indexing errors, send an e-mail identifying the problem to [email protected]. Due to staff time limitations, please do not telephone Archives and History with questions about Vital Research Records, and please do not make research requests to this e-mail address. For instance, if a researcher does not find a record as expected, and would like the staff of the Archives to conduct further research to locate that record, or a substitute source such as a census record or an obituary, a written research request letter is required. Research requests must be sent in writing by regular mail, with the proper fee enclosed, to the West Virginia Archives and History Library (address and details posted at http://www.wvculture.org/history/services.html). For certified copies of records, most often needed for legal purposes, write to the issuing agency, either the county clerk or the West Virginia Dept. of Health Vital Registration office. The West Virginia State Archives can not provide certified copies of any of these records.

To date there is no timetable or definitive schedule for adding new counties. Please be patient with us, check the site periodically for new additions, and watch for announcements in West Virginia Archives and History News. Archives and History does not have the capability of maintaining a mailing list or of e-mailing individuals with updates to the records.

While there are limitations and restrictions pertaining to both the contents and the use of the Vital Research Records Project database, we are offering these records online as a public service to family history researchers. We think the ability of researchers to view digitized photographic images of the actual records rather than typed transcriptions only is very important and contributes to increased accuracy in family records research.

Originally published in:
West Virginia Archives and History News
Volume VI, No. 6, August 2005 and
Volume VI, No. 9, November 2005