Bulgaria Civil Registration

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Civil registration was instituted in 1893. Birth, marriage, and death records have the exact date of the event, including time of day for births; name of the principal and parents’ names; occupation and religious preference of parents; name of informant for births and witnesses for marriages; residence for parents of new born, of the groom and bride for marriages, and of the deceased for deaths; age at death, cause of death, and burial place in death records. Early civil registration was not very effective and there are many gaps in the records. In 1920, family registers were used for vital information. Not until the communist takeover in 1945 was registration conducted in an efficient manner.The records are located at the district archives in each of the twenty eight districts of Bulgaria.

Administratively, Bulgaria is divided into twenty eight districts. Each has an archive where civil registration records are preserved. There are no vital records in the National Historical Archive in Sofia.

Records at the Family History Library
The Family History Library has microfilms of civil registration for the districts of Sofia and Plovdiv and these records usually cover the 1893-1912 time period.

In the Family History Library Catalog, look in the Place Search under:

BULGARIA, [DISTRICT], [LOCALITY] - CIVIL REGISTRATION.