NYC birth certificate success

Just a note to everyone using nyc services: went down to the city archival birth certificate office to try and find a birth cert for my 1881-born ancestor who wasn’t showing up on any files, and after about 30 minutes of research with the archivist discovered that he was born nameless. She successfully pulled a blank cert that has both his parents correctly labeled, both born in Canada.

He’s the first in my line born in the states, so it felt significant to find it, but it was just a masterful bit of research that she did which felt impossible to replicate online. Now for my 1911 grandfather’s certificate… that’s another story. Sharing in case anybody else is feeling stuck!