Heritage Trail Press is happy to offer our newest database, the Oregon Birth Index.
Oregon law prohibits the publication of the birth records less than 100 years from the
birth date therefore we offer the years 1903 through 1908. There are 22,695 names in the database for these years. We are working on 1909 now and those names will be added to the database as soon as completed. There are a lot of sources available where you can find birth records however the actual index that was compiled by the State of Oregon, Vital Statistics has not been made available until
now.
PLEASE UNDERSTAND COPYRIGHT LAW. This index is for your own use and none other. Doing look ups for others or getting information for anyone other than yourself, publishing it or giving it to another site to publish will violate the copyright agreement you say you understand when
you subscribe to this index and we will uphold our copyright to the full extent of the law
Even though a few hospitals existed in the early 1900's a birth was still an event that took place at home more than in a hospital and it was up to the parents, unless attended by a doctor,
to record the birth with the county they lived in. This didn't always happen, the law was new and not everyone would obey it. If the birth was recorded they didn't always have a name for the newborn at the time of recording therefore we have a lot of births recorded without given names. For those records the state would enter just the sex (female) or (male) and
in a few cases (unknown). The index in the early years did not have as much information as in later years. The first year that a parent's name appears in the index is 1931 and then it was only the father's name.
The filming quality is poor at times and there are a lot of pages that are just impossible to read. When we couldn't read the record or couldn't decipher a certain letter in the name we would put the record in more than once using all possible spellings.
Many times there would only be a month and year and no day and that record will be entered just that way. We used the abbreviations that were used by the typist and remember that's how the index was processed, on a typewriter. There are many typo's and when they tried to correct the error it made it impossible to read so
these errors are unavoidable and we regret that. We have done our best to create this index with as little error and omission as possible however we apologize for any that may have occurred and would appreciate any information that you have to correct the errors that you know are factual from family
records. We cannot change the original index it's public record right or wrong however we will add a record with corrections supplied by a family member to our database only.
PLEASE BE AWARE because of the (female), (male) or (unknown) designation instead of a given name, as mentioned above, in order
to see those records you will have to enter the (female) or (male) in the given name section in the search engine. Without that the children that were not named will not appear. Using the county, if known, will also help to locate the records.
If you want to obtain a copy of a birth certificate we cannot give you those you will have to order them from the Oregon State Vital Records.
NOTE:You will not be able to order the old birth certificates through online companies such as Vitalcheck because the information they require you will not have because of the age of the record. According to Oregon Vital Records you need to order directly through them either by phone 571-673-1190, fax 503-234-8417 or mail the request form, which you can fill in from their
site at: www.oregon.gov/DHS/ph/chs/order/docs/birthor.pdf. If you fax the form you will need to put your credit card information on the form and agree to the $32.50 charge for a "certified" copy of the birth certificate. This is the only type of certificate you can obtain for the 100 year old birth certificates. If you use a credit card with them they will
mail the certificate out the following day. IF you mail the form to them at the address on the form and send a money order or check it will take 4 weeks for you to receive the certificate. They ask that you please note on the form or indicate when you call that the birth is over 100 years old so they can locate it quicker.
If you need any more information regarding the records you can go to the state web site at the following address for all pertinent information on the different ways you can order and contact information at: www.oregon.gov/DHS/ph/chs/order/faqs.shtml. Thank you. Heritage Trail Press, Inc.
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