October 16, 2026
I love genealogy. Learning long-forgotten facts about my ancestors is endlessly fascinating. However, genealogy can be frustrating. Hours disappear while you’re scrolling through microfilms that “should” contain information about your family – but somehow don’t. Time spent in the front of a computer screen stretches into the wee hours – with no results.
Unfortunately, not finding the records you’re looking for isn’t an uncommon problem. When we can’t find the records we need, genealogists often think they must be looking in the wrong place. While that does sometimes happen, there are often other reasons why records can’t be found. They may have been lost or destroyed, or maybe they never existed in the first place.
Recently, someone asked me to help them find a birth record for an ancestor who was born in Larimer County. The person wanted to join a lineage society and needed to document their line back to a qualifying ancestor.
They stated they’d tried to find the record themselves but couldn’t locate it. Their assumption was that they were looking in the wrong place. As soon as I saw the year that the ancestor had been born, I knew why a birth record hadn’t been located. The ancestor was born in 1888. Colorado didn’t keep birth and death records at the state level until 1907. Compliance wasn’t universal until 1910.
Some counties did keep birth and death records earlier than that. Larimer County began keeping local birth records in 1902. That means looking for a birth record from 1888 in Colorado is a waste of time. Birth records from that era were not kept at any governmental level. They don’t exist.
To minimize wasting your own and others’ research time, it’s a good idea to do some basic research prior to searching for records. The Family Search Wiki is a good place to start. You can search for the state and county you believe the event occurred. The Wiki lists what records exist for the state and/or county and where they can be found.
If you find that the record you want doesn’t exist, you can search for substitutes. For example, if a birth certificate doesn’t exist, you can try looking for cemetery records, church records, censuses and newspaper articles. These sources may not be as official as a governmental birth certificate, but they can usually help narrow a birth date to a specific year and place. Lineage societies ask for birth and death certificates for every ancestor, but they usually accept various substitutes if the preferred record doesn’t exist.
No matter how much we search, some records won’t ever be found. In earlier times, people weren’t as concerned with documenting their lives as we are. For some periods and in some places, the records we want just don’t exist. Endless searching won’t change that.
Save yourself some time and check before you search. Your blood pressure will thank you.
Carol Stetser
Researcher
Larimer County Genealogical Society