July 17, 1998

Washington is a city of people born elsewhere. So anyone here needing records of remote events – births, deaths, marriages and divorces – may face an informational scavenger hunt: find the appropriate office to contact for records, request the procedure for requesting records and finally order what you need. A click over to the National Center for Health Statistics (part of federal Centers for Disease Control) Web page http://www.cdc.gov/nchswww/howto/w2w/w2welcom.htm might save some time; the page lists procedures for ordering documents from jurisdictions nationwide (this alphabetical list includes American Samoa, Canal Zone and Guam). Perhaps the most obscure records are "Foreign or high-seas births and deaths and certificate of citizenship," which designate life events on ships or aircraft.

– Gabriel Goldberg gabe@acm.org