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.