I am a professional genealogist, and I saw cases like this fairly often in the 1940s, when the first crop of retirees tried to collect age-related Social Security benefits, but could not prove their ages because they never had birth certificates. Typically they had at least some of the alternate documents listed above (baptismal record, school record, etc.). But in lieu of those, they could also submit sworn affidavits from people who knew them since birth: parents, aunts and uncles, neighbors, etc.
What about foundlings? Say some drops off a baby at a hospital a few miles from the border? THere’d be know way to be sure it was even born in the SU.
Common law is that because there is no superior claim that the foundling was born elsewhere, it is presumed to have been born in the state in which it is found.
Since you specifically asked about hillbillies…
The original constitution of the state of Tennessee specifically disenfrachised Indians, Negroes and Melungeons (who are/were kind of the ultimate hillbillies). What government agencies recognize now isn’t historically what they have always recognized.
In one of her books, Jane Jacobs mentions having visited with a church group a community somewhere in Appalachia that had simply been isolated for over a century with no contact with the outside world. They were in a valley surrounded by mountains and it was a hard 12 hour hike to get out. Like the native Tasmanians, as skills disappeared, they did without. They had lost the art of weaving and wore animal skins exclusively. Naturally, they had no birth certificates or other records (I think they had lost writing) and spoke 18th century English. This was around 1920 and I am sure none of them are around today. In those days, no one asked proof of citizenship for anything but a passport.
For example, I got a SS number just by going to an office a few blocks from my home and filling out a simple application. It was issued on the spot, no questions asked. Driver’s license, no one asked for proof of anything (except age, I guess, but I certainly didn’t give them a birth certificate since the name on it was not the one I used–and use).
One correction to the above. A child born of US citizens outside the US is not automatically a citizen. He can registered as a citizen with six months of birth, but the parents have to have resided in the US as adults for certain minimum periods. If you miss the six month window, there is a more complicated procedure for becoming a citizen. I heard of one such case and it is not automatic.
I’m having no luck locating this provision. (Here is the text of the 1796 Tennessee constitution I’ve been checking.)
Searching for “negro” or “melung” seems to turn up nothing. The only use of “indian” comes in the definition of the state borders, where the “Indian towns of Cowee and Old Chota” are referenced.
Article 3 Section 1 covers the right to vote; it begins: “Every free man of the age of twenty-one years and upwards, possessing a freehold in the county wherein he may vote…”
Much use is made of the words “free man”, implying that freed slaves were eligible for the rights of citizens, as under the US Constitution.
This discribes my uncle. His parents were dead, and he was the oldest child…but only by a few minutes. An affidavit from his twin sister (my aunt, obviously) was accepted.
From my experience, all you need is a local birth certificate and proof that one parent is a US citizen to obtain a consular report of birth abroad. Someone born in such a documented manner is legally a “native born American citizen” and can run for President.
My great-grandfather was an illiterate rice farmer in rural Louisiana. As the autumn of his life began gradually to dawn, he noted that, one after the other, his neighbors had ceased laboring in the fields. When he asked them about this, they informed him of the wonders of “retirement.” All you have to do, they told him, was to go down to the little government office in town, tell them you were too old to work any more, and they’d start giving you money, every month, for the rest of your life. Well, old Rosemont (yes, that was his name) thought that was all a bunch of hogwash (or whatever colorful backwoods Louisiana French collequialism they utilized in the 1930s), and he kept right on laboring in the fields. Until the day arrived when he just couldn’t do it any longer. His back hurt, his legs hurt, and he’d probably had one more encounter with a water moccasin than he was prepared to tolerate. So he showed up at the government office and asked for his money. There was a problem, though. Well, actually, two problems. After taking down his name and the whereabouts of his farm, they asked him how old he was. He didn’t know. Your typical subsistence farmer in backwoods Louisiana had little need to observe the precise passage of years. Seasons, yes. Saint’s days? Sure. But years? One was pretty much the same as another. The second problem? He had no documentation. The only kind of records anyone kept back then was certificates of baptism. But the old courthouse building had burned down in the 1920s, taking his certificate with it. In the end, they got his neightbor Pierre, who was already enrolled in the social security program, to come on down to the office and swear under oath that Rosemont was at least three or four years older than he was. Thus was he initiated into the ranks of the properly retired.
Can you give a cite? I find this story suspicious. Surely even the most remote regions of Appalachia had some contact with the wider world; it was my understanding that even the most remote outhouse usually had a copy of the Sears/Roebuck catalog. And if not that, than at least back during the War either the Yankees or draft dodgers and deserters from the Confederates would have passed through at some point.