by Edward F. Holden

Family historians who are frustrated by the regulations restricting the availability of records of certain twentieth century births, marriages, and deaths at the New Hampshire Bureau of Vital Records may often find the information they are seeking in the extensive collection of town and city reports housed at the New Hampshire State Library. Unless the researcher can prove a sibling or lineal relationship to the person whose vital statistics he or she is seeking the Bureau will not issue the record of a birth that occurred after 1900 or a marriage or death that occurred after 1937. However, the State Library's collection of hundreds of annual reports from towns throughout the state contain entries of births that occurred much more recently than 1900, and marriages and deaths that have taken place since 1937. A law entitled An Act for the Better Preservation and Publication of Local vital Statistics, which was enacted by the New Hampshire State Legislature in 1887, directed the town and city clerks in the Granite State to provide transcripts of records of births, marriages, and deaths for inclusion in each municipality's annual report beginning in 1888. It is of special interest to the family historian that all three of these categories of vital records included data on the parents of each child born during the calendar year, of each bride and groom who married during the twelve month period, and of each person who died between January 1 and December 31. Apparently the Manchester city authorities were exempt from this legislation since no vital records are to be found in any of the annual reports of the Queen City. However, the records of births, marriages, and deaths are published in the annual reports of Concord, Keene, Portsmouth, and Nashua into the 1930s.

In 1939 the Legislature repealed the 1887 law compelling the governing authorities in the state's towns and cities to publish vital records in the annual reports, but did not forbid the publication of this information. During the decades between World War II and the 1980s, vital records were omitted from the annual reports of many towns and cities on a gradual basis. Nevertheless, reports of births, marriages, and deaths can still be found today in the annual reports of some towns, but generally they appear in a somewhat abbreviated form when we compare them to the listings published prior to the 1939 statute rescinding the 1887 act.