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Did the midwife file with the county a record of the birth?

Then there would be something on file and your brothers girlfriend could get a certified copy .

Is that the point where they told her she needed an affidavit, was it when she tried to get a certified copy of the birth cert?

Or was it at the passport office?

Reason I ask is because my mother in law was born at home and the birth cert was filed six months later.

When she got old, she let her licence expire due to illness and “I don’t drive anymore” and her activities were such that she didn’t need ID.

Driver license had Americanized version of her old country first name and her married last name. She did what a lot of people did back then, just used an Americanized version of her old country first name without doing a legal name change.

All her older siblings and parents were deceased and her last name had changed the one time due to marriage.

But no record of marriage with the county, because she got married in church; that doc had her old country first name and her maiden last name. Plus the first and last name of her husband.

She did have a baptism cert but it had old country first name and maiden last name.

So no paper trail of formal docs to show first and last name changes; baptism and church marriage docs aren’t accepted anymore .

I did some checking at the genealogy library and found a birth record extract showing her maiden last name and a variant of her old country first name and it was the year in which the baptism cert was issued and so it was probably the right one.

But she was born in new York, and the requirements to get the certified copy was such that in order to —get— the doc proving your birth here, you first had to prove you were born here.

And the person had to do it themselves, a famiy member couldn’t do it for them, due to the tightened rules after 9-11.

Classic catch 22 that would have required the aid of a lawyer to sort out.

That’s what that 19 year old Texas girl Alecia Faith Pennington did ....

her grandparents on both sides, her parents, her, and her eight siblings were all born in Texas.

All her siblings and her were born at home and the parents never got birth certs or soc sec numbers for them and they all were homeschooled.

So, as far as the “system” is concerned, the children don’t exist, and can’t prove their citizenship.

So when the young lady wanted to leave home and go to school, she tried to file for a birth cert and was denied.

She went to live with her grandparents, and with their help, got a lawyer and also went to her elected representative to alert them to the situation.