Alabama Vital Records
Have you been meaning to research your family tree? Did you finally get started and are now wondering how to access Alabama vital records? You are in luck. Alabama started a statewide vital records data base over a decade ago. Any county health department can access it. If you cannot go there in person, you will have to contact the state’s vital records office in its capital, Montgomery. Alabama has eleven cities with populations over 100,000. The largest ancestry group is African-American.
While the state of Alabama has many records available online through the Alabama Department of Alabama History, ADAH, birth, death, marriage and divorce certificates are not among them although the death records for state convicts are slated for digitization. Alabama vital records are kept by the Alabama Department of Public Health. You can get a form to request birth certificates online. After mailing it, you can expect a copy of the birth certificate within ten days. However, you must be a member of the immediate family of the person whose birth certificate you are requesting. If your relationship is any more distant than that you will have to wait 125 years before you can obtain a copy of their birth certificate.
If you are already doing research in person in Alabama you can obtain records from the county health departments. For example in Jefferson County the records are kept in Birmingham. If you need Alabama vital records for genealogical research you are better off trying for death certificates since anyone can get a copy of those 25 years after the death of the person. Even better are marriage and divorce certificates since Alabama does not consider those to be confidential records. Anyone can get a copy but they have only been filing them since 1936 and 1950 respectively. Be aware that getting official copies of vital records costs money. You can expect to pay about $15 per certificate.
