Excerpt from Guide to Public Vital Statistics in Tennessee Kept indifferently, If at all, until recent years, vital statistics have recently assumed an unprecedented importance. To many a citizen in 1940 and 1941 the necessity of establishing proof of citizenship gave to vital statistics a significance above and beyond that already known to historians, sociologists, estuaries, political scientists, public health authorities, and even genealogists. Neglected as was the science of numbers applied to the life history of communities and nations, a considerable mass of public vital statistics has been accumulated. In the course of their inventories of public arch ives, the several Historical Records Survey projects in the country have listed and described much archival material relating to births, deaths, marriages, and divorces. Unfortunately, cnly a lesser part of this mater ial has yet been published in the Survey's public archives inventories. A greater part, however, has been accumulated and is in various stages of editorial completion in the projects' files. Certain preliminary schedules of vital statistics were furnished the Bureau of the Census by the Survey projects in the fall of 1940, and it was thereafter suggested by that agency that the Survey undertake the publication, by states, of a nation 'wide series of guides to public vital statistics in the United States. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.