What you need to know about Mexican civil registration records
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Updated July 12, 2022
What’s in this post
What are Mexican civil registration records?
What you can find in civil registrations
Where to find Mexican civil registration records online
Books to help you with your Mexican genealogy research
If you have Mexican heritage, you may be wondering how to get find your family in Mexican records.
Well, you’re in luck because Registro Civil, or Mexican civil registration records, are gems! They're loaded with genealogical information.
Even if you are not fluent in Spanish, you can use these resources to trace your ancestry.
As long as you learn some basic Spanish terms, you learn basic birth, marriage, and death information about your family.
In this article, I’m sharing how to use Mexico’s civil registration system in your genealogy research.
What are is a civil registry?
But first, what is a civil registry anyway?
Mexican civil records are government documents recording births, marriages, and deaths. Somewhat like the US and other countries, they’re organized first at the state level and then the municipality/town.
About 1859, President Benito Juarez mandated that vital records had to be kept by the state. Before then, the Catholic church oversaw vital record registration.
But like many other places, it took a while before there was full compliance with people registering births, deaths, and marriages with the state instead of the church, as they were used to doing.
Civil registration records available online cover 1861 through about 1940, depending on the type of event.
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What can you find in civil registration records?
Civil registries are essential resources for Mexican genealogy research.
What wonderful about them is they always name a person’s parents. And because of the culture of wives keeping their maiden names, that is nearly always found as well.
But the truly special thing about them is sometimes the grandparents are also named!
Birth records have:
date and place of the registration
the baby’s name
the date of birth
whether the child is legitimate
the parent’s names and ages
where they lived
the father’s occupation
names of witnesses
Sometimes where the parents were from and the grandparents’ names are also included.
Marriage records in Mexico have:
the names of the bride and groom
where they lived
where they were from
their parents’ names
the date of the marriage
if they were widowed or single
their ages
location
The parents’ ages are also sometimes listed
Mexican death records have:
name
age
place of death
spouse name
parents’ names
occupation
The burial place and cause of death can also be found
As you can see, there can be a wealth of genealogical information stored in these.
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How do I find my family records in Mexico?
Mexican civil records can be found on both Ancestry and FamilySearch.
On both sites, they are organized by state, like Coahuila, then by the municipality or town, then by the type of event (birth, death, marriage).
To get to the collection, you can use the catalogs for each site to find the state your family was from.
Fortunately, they are indexed on both sites, making them easy to search. Many also have scanned images of the register. Unfortunately, there are a couple of states that have missing records – Campeche, Tabasco, and Morelos.
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Where are civil registration records after 1940?
More contemporary civil records, after 1939, are held in each individual state.
Contact the local state register’s office to ask about getting copies.
Books to help you with your Mexican genealogy research
Looking for more resources for researching your Mexican heritage?
A couple of good general how-to books to guide you further are Finding Your Mexican Ancestors: A Beginner’s Guide and Mexican Genealogy Research Online.
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Final thoughts
Civil registration records in Mexico are one of the essential resources for Mexican genealogy. You can find many biographical details about your ancestors in them and may even find the names of multiple generations included in them.