The information for these data tables came from microfilm provided by the LDS Church Library System. These microfilms were made in Decatur, Wise County, TX around the last months of 1991. The microfilms had images of birth certificates, amended birth certificates, corrected birth certificates, and images of 434 pages of an index of the certificates (see one page below). In 2007 David Pitts took digital pictures of all the images on the microfilms at the LDS Library in Houston. We then cropped the pictures, numbered them, and gathered the data for the tables in the alphabetical link buttons above. Additional information came from the book Birth Records Wise County, Texas (1864-1902), compiled by Julian G. Allen in 1986. Other information was added from local cemetery records, marriage records, and personal knowledge. Most of this extra information will be in parenthesis.

Look for alternant spellings and errors in this data ---
We found MANY INCONSISTENCIES AND ERRORS on these birth certificates and in the index tables. Some of this is from carelessness in filling out the birth certificates. Some of the errors are from the difficulty in reading the old handwriting, and, of course, there are just plain errors and typos.
Many of these old birth certificates were not filled in completely. Many babies were not named at the time of birth. For these babies we have “Blank” for child’s given or first name. Many of the mother’s maiden names were not given in the first original birth certificates. These are shown as “BLANK” in our data tables. More complete information was given in an amended or delayed birth certificate. At this time the child’s given name was listed, as well as more complete information about the parents. This amended information was also used in compiling our data. Most of the older birth information (from the 1800s) is from delayed certificates. These certificate numbers have [brackets around the number].

In keeping with the “freedom of information act”,
only birth information that is at least 75 years old is included in our data.

We have images of the actual birth certificates for 9,500 individuals available for email on request. Some are not filled in with very much information, but the ones with corrected or amended certificates are better. These will have an "a" additional certificate number. We DO NOT have images of the certificate numbers with [brackets] around the number. Those were issued as delayed certificates and they were not on the microfilms. We also do not have images for some of the ones from the 1930's.
Most of the information on the birth certificates will be in our data. The actual certificates may have the city or county of the parent's birth, their age, occupation, and number of other children. We did not put those things in our data tables.