Instructions concerning the registration of births, marriages and deaths in Massachusetts : designed for town clerks and physicians / by Oliver Warner.

  • Oliver Warner
Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Instructions concerning the registration of births, marriages and deaths in Massachusetts : designed for town clerks and physicians / by Oliver Warner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    often prove of incalculable benefit to the parties married and to their prospective offspring, the protection of whose interests was the main object of the statutory provisions; while injustice to innocent parties may result from failure or delay of those before whom marriages are solemnized, to make proper returns of the same. Of Parties Living in the State and Marrying out of it. When the Marriage of persons one or both of whom reside in this State is solemnized in another State, the parties must within seven days after their return, file with the Clerk of the town in which either of them resided, a certificate or declaration of the marriage, with all the particulars required by law. Penalty for neglect,—ten dollars. Duties op Town Clerks [or Registra'RS.] It is the duty of every Town Clerk or Registrar not only to receive such returns as may, from time to time, be made to him by Undertakers, Physicians, Clergymen and others, but also to supply all deficiencies, by ^^ obtaining ^^ the facts respecting events not so returned—so that his record may faithfully represent all the cases of Deaths, Births, and Marriages, which occur in his town. It may in some cases (though rarely,) be impossible to ascertain all the particulars required by law relative to each event, but the event itself should never escape unnoticed. Otlier- wise, the returns will possess, for statistical purposes, but little value. Concerning Inquiries to he made for Births. In obtaining the information required by law respecting Births, not previously reported by parents, undertakers, or others, it has been customary for the Town Clerk once—and in certain of the larger places tivice—in each year, either personally or by agent, to make inquiries from house to house concerning the children born since the time when the last previous inquiries- were made. The continuation of this practice cannot be too earnestly recom- mended, as no other method is equally effective. (The law making the return of Births the duty of physicians, having upon trial been found unsatisfactory, has been repealed.)