Which is my Place of Birth? Town of the hospital? Or town of my home?

Question

Ok, this might be a strange question, but I know I put down my "hometown" as my Place of Birth, and it's probably where anyone that knows me would think to look up.  But is that actually the correct place to use?  Technically, I was born in a hospital two towns over, so should I use the town my parents lived in at my birth, or would it be in the town the hospital is physically in?  (I don't have my Birth Certificate in front of me at the moment, so I'm not sure which is listed there, but I suspect it's the town of the hospital.)

While I'm at it, let me ask, what should I read to get a good idea of where and how to start  on genealogy.  I'm a total newbie on this, but I've long been wanting to track back my ancestors to see where things lead.   So any tips/advice on what to read to learn about how to do this, would be very much appreciated.  (I'm already fascinated with the tid bits I've been able to google search and find, as well as frustrated on the stuff I haven't been able to find/track down yet.)

Comments

You probably should mention for which country you want to know this,  because legislation and rules about this can differ.:)

I know in my country - the Netherlands - the place of birth on your birth certificate is the municipality you are actually born in. When you are born in a hospital, the municipality where the hospital is will be mentioned on your birth certificate.

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Your hometown and your place of birth don't have to be the same place.

Or, as one of my relatives would put it, you "were born" in the town in which the hospital was located "because you wanted to be close to" your "mother!"

(If my answer isn't clear, it's the town in which the hospital is located.)

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Isn't this an example of a case you would want to explain in the biography?  I know that i was born in a hospital 70 miles away from the town my parents lived in, because there had just been a fire in the home-town hospital.  My birth certificate says that i was born in the town that had the functioning hospital, and if anyone wanted to check my sources at source, that is where they would have to go.  However, they won't find my family on any census docs in that town --  all other records would be connected to the home-town.  So if i wanted to be both accurate and helpful, i would need to explain the situation.  Which i didn't on my own bio, so now I'll go off and do that!

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The name of the hospital and the town that it's in should be printed on the birth certificate.  If not, there should be a number code on the certificate somewhere,  You should be able to type that in and it should come up.  They won't let you change the birthplace as you were not born in your home town. That could cause legal issues for the hospital and lots of paperwork to fabricate a federal document.  If you are trying to find out where the hospital is, just look 70 miles around from your hometown and look at the names of the cities.  One might ring a bell for you.  I do repeat, if you are trying to change the birth location, in the United States, they won't do it.  It's illegal as a birth certificate is a federal document.  If I misunderstood what I read and am way off base, then I do humbly apologize .

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I understand what you are asking. My place of birth is Monterey, Putnam, Tennessee which is in an adjacent county to where my hometown is Pleasant Hill, Cumberland, Tennessee. I always say I was born in Monterey but grew up in Pleasant Hill.

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I was born in Georgia, USA but my family never lived there.  My birth certificate reflects the location of the hospital where I was born.   It was only a few miles from our home in Alabama. I never use the name of the hospital, just town, county,  state,  United States.

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Hi,  place of birth is town, state, country.

Have a good day

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William, Your birth town caught my eye. My great grandfather [Hunt-19615|Thomas Hunt] died in Monterey in the Civil War, 1862.

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I've been reading all the answers everyone has commented on. Most are why we all have issues completing or confirming profiles. Biggest complaint is female married name in the maiden name location. Others are using pre USA years as post usa. We were colonial colonists in a colony.  

Birth place, I use name of hospital or at home, city or town.  Next Township if available at time of birth. Next County, and then X Colony or country. Reason being, we are trying to recreate the life and history of that person. If I'm the only pearson that knows my father was born in the family home by a local Doctor, I'll put that in where I can. No one a 100 years from now would know he was educated in a one room school house until high-school, I'll put that in.

Did he die at home in a barn or accident,  Was he or his family buried in the family cemetery or out next to the big oak tree, on the family farm or along the road. These are experiences only known to a few. Yet your 3 great grandchild may want to know, and feel a need to know these experiences. These experiences are entirely why we are antiquarian's. We want to know our family and friends. If you don’t put all the information into the profile, no one else may care to put it in. We all live to be remembered for something or nothing. We owe it to our ancestors and descendents to remember them as they were. There is no such thing as too little information, or too much.

Thank you Everyone.

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Not all people are born in a town, some are born in boats some on trains and some on tiny islands.

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It gets a bit more complicated for location of death. At least in Ontario, Canada, where I live in most cases only a doctor or medical examiner can certify that a person has died. Paramedics are required to try to resuscitate a person so declared death location (likely a hospital in most cases) and actual location may not be the same place.

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Love that comment. Thankyou!

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The things that stick in our minds sre the stories surrounding a person, the way someone pronounces a name, whether they danced a lot, excelled at sports, quoted Shakespeare, used expressions, sang a lot, volunteered, was well read…..,

Answer 1

Not really pertinent but nobody dies in the Palace of Westminster (being the house of. Commons and the House of Lords). If they were to contemplate such a thing, an ambulance would be called and they would remain alive until they died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.

This is because the Palace of Westminster is a royal Palace and the Queen is the coroner of all such palaces and she prefers not to exercise that role.

Answer 2

You would always use the actual physical birth place. Weather born in Hospital or, Home or other place. This is the place that will be shown on the official record.

Answer 3

When in doubt the help pages are very useful.

Comments

My "original" adoption birth certificate said I was born in the Commonwealth of Virginia, outside the city limits of Richmond.  It had every possible detail known to mankind, including finger and foot prints. was issued 16 months after my birth as they waited until the adoption was final. I went 45 years using that certificate  - school enrollment, driver's license, passports, etc. Moved to Louisiana  - they refused to accept it because the location was too vague and it was issued too long after the birth. It took 10 years and over $3000 to get an acceptable version so I could prove I wasn't an undocumented alien.  All it contains is date and time of birth, parents' names and the records book and page. I could finally get a State ID.

Fast forward 4 years. ID is expiring the day before my birthday. Office of Motor Vehicles closes for 2 weeks for a hurricane that didn't even come here. ID expires. When I went to renew it, I'm told I am required to produce my Social Security Card and get the new "Real ID".i haven't seen my SS card since my last move. It's packed in a box somewhere.  Figured I'd just order a duplicate rather than empty all those boxes. Nope. To get a duplicate SS card, you have to have a validn unexpired State ID. To get the ID, you have to have a valid SS card. I am coming on my second year of being an illegal again !

Answer 4

My birth town was Monterey, Putnam, Tennessee about 14 miles by road from my hometown of Pleasant Hill, Cumberland, Tennessee. There was a hospital about the distance away in the county but parents choose Monterey Hospital instead.

I think it would be much better geneaology-wise to list your home town rather than your birth town as that would be where your "roots" are.

Answer 5

To me place of birth is when possible the place where the child exited the mother's body. If the family was normally residents of any other community at the time I would note that in the biography section.

As a Genealogy newbie WikiTree has you covered here is a great helper resource to get you started. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:How_to_Get_Started_with_Genealogy

Answer 6

My advise is your birthplace is the hospital and town the hospital is in. Your hometown is where you live.

As for starting genealogy

a) start with your own birth marriage

b) then your parents and grandparents

c) talk to and get as many family details of the elder members of the family (while you can).

d) Get as many photos etc as possible while you can

Remember elder family members pass away and when they do so do their memories and also there photos tend to get thrown away.

Always ask questions of others if you are not sure what to do, there is always someone who can help

I use multiple internet sites and compare and then use this as a guide to find the actual sources available

Hope this helps

Answer 7

I was born in a different state than the one I grew up in, I only lived about 48 hours in that state! It was once very important to remember when I lost my passport on a hike in Switzerland and a nice passerby asked if I was from "birth state." I was confused a moment thinking it wasn't me, but thankfully I remembered and claimed my passport!

Answer 8

I would say your hospital. That is where you were born and not in the town you live or at your house (unless you were born there). I was born in a hospital in my city. I spent my first two or 3 days of life there. So that must be my birthplace and the same should be with you.

Answer 9

Place of Birth would be listed on the Birth Certificate as in where the hospital was, My brother and sister were born 75 miles away from where we lived. Just for the fact our town did not have a hospital but when asked they always say there "home town" was where our family lived.

Answer 10

My top tip to those unfamiliar with birth registration in England and Wales (1837 on) is that the place is not a town/city, but a Registration District. And unlike the town with the same name, they are sometimes areas in more than one county. And sometimes they have names which are not a settlement.

Answer 11

I'm sure I'll go challenged. But my thought is only an 'off the cuff' one. I think in merry olde England if you were born in point B, say while you mother was carrying you and you were visiting whether for a day or temporarily but planned to returned to Point A, and your family was known as the "Jolly old Brits of point A" then if I was born as Jack, I would be the "Jolly olde Brit Jack of A" For my family was known from there. Just a thought. I guess since we are mostly of English stock with the Pilgrims, Jamestown and all that I think of us as using some of their conventions still. A hospital is a building, not a town or place.

Comments

You could also be called "Jolly olde Brit Jack of A, but born in B." Thus your birth location was B.

I think the issue is/was that some political jurisdictions don't/didn't record the actual birth facts. Don't ask me why, though.

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As a Brit myself it is hard to tell exactly where anyone was born before 1837 as there were no official birth records, only baptisms/christenings. In most cases people were born in the same parish that the baptism took place, but not always. If you're luckly it would be noted in the register.

After 1837 when civil registration was introduced, the birth certificates give the exact place that a child was born and it wasn't always the village or town that they grew up in. Mothers would often travel to their 'home village' to give birth. You also had births in workhouses, which were in the town of the poor law union and not where the mother normally resided. In the 20th century, hospital births became more common than home births. All of these show that the place of birth can very often not be the home town.

My father was the first in my paternal line to be born in a hospital and so I have recorded his place of birth as the town that the hospital was in, rather than the village that his parents lived at the time.

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Good information. A DNA test of the Poores, my brother and I, showed most of our DNA from Southern England I believe in the Devon area. But your information seems to say that there's not much chance of finding direct relations beyond 1837 and I actually knew my great-grandfather who was born in 1861. But I was too young to think to ask him questions about our family which he could have answered at that time in the late 50s and early 60s

Answer 12

Elmhurst Hospital

Answer 13

Good question.  The root problem is that "place of birth" serves more than one purpose.  For legal purposes, POB is what your birth certificate says, as several people have pointed out.  For genealogical purposes I am not so sure. We also want to find legal documents, which probably follow what your birth certificate says, but we also want to know the name of the community in which you and your parents lived.  For WikiTree sounds like a Policy and Style issue to me.

Answer 14

I was born at home, with a midwife called Jacqueline.  My Dad was sent off to the GPO to work on the bus.

It was at 25 Northside Terrace, Lidget Green, Yorkshire, England.  It was on a cobblestone road.  My Dad was sent off to work as it was none of his business what was going on with my birth.  I was not yet born;  my Mum was 21 and my Dad was 22.

I was named after my midwife:  Jacqueline.

Shortly after; Doctor Howard stopped by (3 hours later) and said my Mum was good to go.  She was still bleeding and I was born.

My Dad was allowed back in the house.  He threw me up onto the ceiling (it was upstairs) and banged my soft head for fatality.

Then he screwed my Mum and made my little sister Wendy.

Wendy also was named after her mid wife:  Wendy.

Neither of us have middle names and we still exist in Canada.

End of.

Jacqueline Dobson in the colonies with a broken skull and a little sister Windy.

Answer 15

To answer your question:

Your place of birth is the town of the hospital which you were born in.

I do understand the logic behind the question since there may be a case where a hospital was not used, or if by chance the one who gave birth doesn't exist.

Comments

I realize this is an old post but it caught my attention. I was always told and taught that where you were born is where you were born. If you were born in town A and live in town B...then you are born in town A not the town of residency.  For instance... I was born in Gary but lived in Hammond.  On my birth certificate it says I was born in Gary.  I've never lived in Gary but that is where the hospital is where I was born thus that is my place of birth. You can't say that you were born someplace you were not. Just my thoughts. ;-)

Answer 16

Yes, this an old post, but here it is again. Let's try the question this way. Why are you asking it? Are you looking for an official record? Or do you want to put up a historical sign, "on this site, Famous Ancestor was born"? Or do you just want things to be tidy when you create a profile?

Answer 17

In Maine, you can obtain a copy of your birth certificate at both the town/city where you born and at the town/city that you were a resident of when you were born. I was born in Dover-Foxcroft, but I lived in Guilford. You can also obtain a copy at the State Bureau of Records. However, this still leaves me confused. Should I put Dover-Foxcroft or Guilford?

Answer 18

I know this was started quite a while ago, but I'd like to add something.  Not so much about procedures but circumstances.  Our son said he was asked to choose a security question on something.  One of the options was mother's place of birth.  He said he didn't know.  I was surprised.  I told him "it was in that little town no one has ever heard of called GETTYSBURG."  I think he'll remember now.

Answer 19

I am Norwegian and live in Norway. When i started genealogical reserch a good number of years ago, i had the same problem, but eventually i come to the conclusion that the only thing that later, actually had meaning for my descendants would be to know where my homeplace was.

In cases where someone is adopted out immediately after birth, i assume, if they know it, the name of the hospital, or similar, and the city/place will be right thing to use.

Answer 20

The community in which you were born. If at sea or other body of water, then ideally

(1) the ship

(2) the body of water, and

(3) latitude and longitude.

in flight:

(1) airline

(2) flight number

(3) source and destination of flight