Delayed Birth Certificate Records for Kentucky

Special thanks to Mary Hatton (transcription), Jerry Taylor (formatting), Suzanne Shepherd (extraction) and all other KyArch file managers who worked on getting this information organized, distributed and available for our genealogical research web sites.

    Kentucky started keeping birth and death records in 1852, stopped in 1862, started again in 1874, but did not mandate this information be kept until 1 January 1911. Before that date, births and deaths were recorded at the county level and copies were forwarded to the state each year. Surviving birth records are mostly for the years 1852-1861, 1874-1879 and 1900-1910. Due to official indifference regarding record keeping statewide, a lot of births were not recorded for many of the years before 1911. (The records for 1874-1879 have been indexed for the entire state. That index is available at KDLA.)
    People lacking official certificates were able to file delayed birth certificates with the state. This became common due to the requirements of the newly formed Social Security Administration and military service. According to Roseann Hogan, "Kentuckians have filed over a half-million of these delayed certificates... Social Security, for a time, accepted completed certificates that were not filed with the Department of Vital Statistics in Frankfort. Therefore, it is possible, that even if no official certificate can be found in Frankfort, a certificate may have been filed with Social Security or other government agencies." (Ref: Kentucky Ancestry, page 79)  Delayed birth certificates contain name, age, date of birth, place of birth, sex, race, parents' names, which is similar to regular birth certificates. Plus two older witnesses, one related one unrelated.

    These KyArchive posted records have been subdivided for easier web access via the Internet for each Kentucky county with over 45,400 names transcribed.  Alternate text formats, file compression and discretionary record management will be experienced for research purposes relative to the individual archive file manager.  Problems accessing the information should be reported to the KyArchive State File Manager or Assistant to obtain help.  Due to the enormous size of the complete record file, it is maintained in the Microsoft Excel format.  Please contact the respective KyArchive County File Manager for assistance in searching any specific individual surname.
    The KYGENWEB Project has also provided some of this resource information on their respective county web sites.  Those KyGW County Coordinators can also provide assistance for a specific county search where available.

Excel Viewer - Use this link to download a utility for opening Excel format (*.xls) files if you do not have Microsoft Excel on your computer.

KY Delayed Birth Records - The complete file is very large (7 Mb) and in Excel format.
NOTE: It is recommended using high speed Internet access (DSL or Broadband) to open these Excel files.

Unknown County of Record - This file contains surnames with no associated county of birth noted on the certificate.

KyArchive Counties - This FTP web site will access all KyArchive county stored files.  The birth record files archived are much smaller in size.

KyArchive Project - Access to the KyARCH state web site.  The individual county birth record archived files are much smaller in size.

KyGenWeb Project - Access the project state web site and jump to individual county home pages.

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