In the state of Florida, public records are generally held by one of three agencies:

1. The county courts–County courts house vital records (birth, death, marriage, and divorce), wills, land transactions, civil and criminal case dockets, probate records, tax lien records, and similar documents.

2. The sheriff’s departments in each county–The sheriff’s departments keep arrest records in each county, along with mug shots.

3. The property appraisers in each county–The property appraisers keep records of who owns property, as well as when a property sells, and for how much. You’ll also find the taxable value of each property at these agencies.

The Florida Department of Vital Statistics in Jacksonville also houses some records. You’ll find state-wide birth, death, marriage, and divorce records there going back to about the 1920’s, depending on the record. For vital records earlier than that, you’ll need to go to the county court house in which the event occurred.

The only records that are sealed are birth records and juvenile records (both civil and criminal, including guardianship papers). To get either, you have to be either the person named in the record, or the parent of that person. Birth records are unsealed after 100 years, at which point anyone can request them.

The Government in the Sunshine law is responsible for the openness of Florida’s records. This law was put into practice under the presumption that official government records are part of the process of governing, and that in a democratically elected government system, the records of the government ought to be available to the public that elected it.

Many counties in Florida are now putting their public records online for anyone to access. Some of the larger counties in the state, such as Hillsborough, Polk, Orange, and Dade, have scanned images of documents on their websites, so you can view the entire record without leaving home (for privacy reasons, documents pertaining to family law cases are only viewable at the court house in these counties). Other counties only have the indexes to records available online, so you have to go to the court house in person to see the entire record, or use a records retrieval service like www.inforegistry.com to pull up the records on your computer for you. Still other counties have no records available online yet, which makes Public Records Pro even more of a necessity for you if you live too far away from the county you’re researching in to drive there.

The state of Florida public records are among the most accessible in the nation. Whether you’re looking for just one or many, www.inforegistry.com can help you find and view them without ever leaving your house. That’s convenience you can count on!

You may assume that the Escambia County public records will tell you that your ancestor was born in Escambia County. However, you can never know that for sure until you check it out. What you have to do is to find out where you can locate birth records that confirm that you suspect to be true. Not only do those birth certificates and records confirm what you know, they can give you more information that further expands your searching in new directions.

The information you find through birth records will give date of birth as well as location. That you probably already know. However, what is very helpful, besides the obvious, is that parents are also listed on these records. That means that you have the correct name of the father and even the maiden name of the mother in most cases. That is information on which you can count, and that is invaluable in researching a family tree.

You can find birth records by sending out for them, but that can be very time consuming. Instead, see what you can find online. More and more people are having good luck with this today, as new information is added to various genealogy sites each and every day. That means a search of these with your loved one’s name can give you the place of birth and possibly show you the actual record so you can use all of the information.

Searches do not always work well, and that greatly depends on how you go about it. If you simply cannot find the records you seek, don’t give up until you try another source. There are some sites that specialize in being able to find where your loved ones were born along with other helpful vital records for your family tree endeavor. If you can’t visit the Escambia County public records in person to look for the information you need, some of these specialty sites, like www.inforegistry.com, can help you find the records you seek right from the comfort of your own home, so you never need to go to the court house!

As a genealogist, you never know what you may find in the public records of Florida. The records of this particular state are very open and accessible to everyone, thanks to the state’s Government in the Sunshine law that mandates official government activities be open to the public. Nearly anyone can request to see any record on any person and be granted access (birth records being a rare exception–those are sealed for 100 years, and until then, only you or your parents can see yours).

In the public records of Florida, you might find evidence of births, deaths, and marriages in your family that were previously unknown. I personally discovered (quite unexpectedly!) that my grandfather had a secret wife that no one knew about! He’s gone now, but the marriage record is right there, in the public records, for anyone to see! It was news to my mother, and news to my grandmother, as well! It seems that after he and my grandmother divorced, he had a brief, secret marriage that lasted only a year before he married my step-grandmother. Without the Florida public records, we never would have known about this, but now we have a new name to add to our family tree!

You might also find evidence of illegitmate births for children that were later given up for adoption, as well as criminal records for relatives who always seemed to lead clean, law-abiding lives. If you’re searching probate records and wills, you could discover you’re heir to an estate you never knew about before! If you’re a genealogist or simply interested in uncovering family secrets, the public records of Florida are where you want to look! If you don’t live in Florida and can’t visit the court houses there in person to find the records you want, a subscription to www.inforegistry.com is only $2.95 a month, and will deliver these records right to your computer. It’s a great service from a trusted company, and is gaining a lot of popularity among genealogists for its millions of records from all over the United States.

Not every Florida county has online public records yet, but quite a few do. The amount of information you’ll find on the county clerk of the court websites varies from full case listings to merely indexes that leave you tantalized and wanting more. To get more, of course, you have to make the trip to the court house in person.

Alternately, you can choose to use a reputable public records search service like www.inforegistry.com and Gov-Resources to find your records for you and deliver them to you on your computer. These kinds of services are a more cost-effective and time-saving approach for people who either need a lot of records (and don’t want to pay outrageous copy fees to the court for them) or live too far away from the county where the record they want is located (and don’t want to take the time to drive there).

Both www.inforegistry.com and Gov-Resources have millions of Florida public criminal records available in their databases, as well as a comparable number of birth, death, marriage, divorce, and other types of public records. Therefore, the chances of these services having exactly what you’re looking for is extremely high.

Make sure you know all about the past of anyone you’re involved with, either on a personal or professional basis. Look them up in the Florida public criminal records. You may find nothing at all, and if so, great! That means there’s nothing to worry about with that person, at least as far as a criminal history goes. However, if you find a record of something that person never told you about, then you have the information you need to decide how you’ll proceed with your relationship with him or her. Be informed and protect yourself with knowledge.

You may be fearful at what you may find in your spouse’s past, and this fear might be preventing you from taking the next step – trying to discover the truth. However, not knowing and worrying about it is worse than actually facing the skeletons. Moreover, by investigating the Florida marriage records, you may end up discovering that you were worried for nothing, because his background is clean.

Therefore, in the event you experience something that leads you to suspect there is more to your husband than meets the eye, you can discreetly look into his background without letting him or anyone else know. How can you possibly achieve this without arousing suspicions? The answer is an online public records search directory.

There are many websites online that have been designed for the purpose of allowing online consumers to perform vital record searches. The way the service typically works is you enter in the full name of the person you are looking for into the provided search fields, pay the required nominal sum to access the information bank, and run the investigation.

What will a public records search reveal about your husband? A vital record can include details regarding a person’s birth, death, demographics, previous and current locations, marriage, divorce, criminal background, etc. Therefore, if your spouse does have any past secrets that haunt him, you could potentially discover he…

- Was previously or still is married

- Is older or younger than he claims to be

- Has been divorced

- Has children

- Has family you didn’t know about

- Has a criminal record

- Etc.

There could be many ugly truths for you to find, or there may be none at all. Thus, if you want to find out if your husband had previous marriages, if he’s a criminal, or has any other dark secrets from his past, don’t be afraid to use a convenient public-records lookup, including the Florida marriage records, that can help you. www.inforegistry.com is highly recommended for this. Visit their site by clicking the banner below.

Have you taken up genealogy as a hobby and you are becoming frustrated because you’ve suddenly realized the project isn’t nearly as easy as you thought it would be? You’re not alone. Many people jump head first into building family trees or history books, only to discover that beyond their immediate family, they know little else about their other relatives. If you need to fill in the missing pieces to the relations puzzle, it’s always a good idea to ask others, such as your parents, cousins, aunts, uncles, etc.; about the person whose facts you’re missing because they may know.

However, this may not always be possible. In example, if you wanted to know where your great auntie was from, there could be a number of circumstances that would prevent you from finding this out. You may discover that no one who is still living knows the answer; you may have been told the name of different birth places from more than one person and are confused; or you may be recording the family history as a gift to someone and you don’t want them to know about it. Regardless of what the reason may be, if you are having trouble finding out where your great aunt grew up, a simple online search using a public record directory may be all you need.

How do I run this hunt? You log on to the Internet, and using a search engine lookup the keyword public records search, vital record directory, etc. Choose a few of the web results that are returned so you can look into these sites and research them a bit before you make any find decisions to use it. If after reading the F.A.Q’s, “About Us” section, checking up on the guarantee, security, and comparing prices (these searches are not free), you find a website you trust, and you can then begin your search. Searching involves looking up the person’s first and last name, city, and state and birth date (Note: only the full name is required).

Will I learn any other information aside from discovering where my great aunt was born? Certainly! If you are able to find your relative’s Florida birth records online you will discover her:

- Place of birth

- Date of birth

- Names of parents

- Name of other family members

- Any announcements that were made when she was born

Once I know where my great, great aunt was born, can I lookup other relatives without paying again, or do I have to pay for each investigation separately? Most sites that have directories usually offer those who wish to join the chance to pay a flat rate for unlimited searches for a limited time, while others will charge a very, very small monthly fee for non-stop searching. www.inforegistry.com is a great, economical way to access Florida birth records whenever you need them. If you’re an avid genealogist, then a subscription to this site is a must for you, as it’s a tool you’ll use again and again in your research.

Florida death records include tombstones as well as death certificates. Tombstones are not always one hundred percent accurate, but most are. You can find the tombstones of those that you know died near where you now live by going to the cemetery on your own to see what each stone says. You can find birth date and sometimes name of spouse this way as well if that is information that you do not yet have.

That is not always possible however, as families move around a lot. When that happens, they could be buried just about anywhere. If they lived near you, but were born somewhere else, they could have been taken back to their hometown for burial. You never know. When that happens, you are going to have a harder time getting what you need. That is when you turn to the Internet for help.

One great source for cemetery information would be the many ancestry sites you can find online. These are full of great resources that are intended to help anyone with their genealogy endeavors. They can have complete listings of cemeteries (including what is on each tombstone) that you can open up and search through. You may get lucky, as more and more cemeteries are being indexed so they can be searched online – even small ones. You can also try search engines to see what you can find.

When you simply do not want to spend time searching for Florida death records on your own, or you find nothing through your search efforts, you can find quicker and easier help somewhere else. You can find a site that specializes in old records so you can find a cemetery that may have the information that you seek for your family tree records.