Marriage Records and Indexes: Choose the Original

The other day I was asked, "Is it worth getting the marriage license? They say so little, doesn't the index capture all the information?"

Short answers: Yes, and Not usually.

Longer answer: BCG Standard No. 21 reminds us that "the original is the most authoritative source." Are these sketchy old-school records an exception? No. Six reasons from a mainly  Midwestern viewpoint:

(1) Indexers are human. They can leave something out or transcribe something wrong. This is not a rare occurrence. In this 2008 article I compared marriage indexes to each other and the original records they referred to.

(2) The licenses and returns that I've dealt with name the person who married the couple; many indexes do not. That person's identity, denomination (if any), and location may provide clues as to where the couple lived or where they created other records.

(3) They also give the dates of both events if different.

(4) Some licenses and returns give the bride's or groom's ages, or their places of residence, or both. Some also name witnesses.

(5) Sometimes the bride's or groom's ages are implied by a parent or guardian's note giving consent to the marriage. My all-time favorite in this category comes from La Salle County, Illinois (see illustration). Elizabeth Shown Mills has called such records "land mines." This one sure was.

(6) Sometimes auxiliary records such as marriage applications appear in the guise of regular marriage records; if you don't ask, you  may not receive. In Indiana, many researchers know to look for marriage applications beginning in 1905, and better ones 1940-1977. Not so many know that there are two earlier forms with extensive additional information available for some counties as early as 1882.

Choose the original. You won't regret it.

La Salle County, Illinois, marriage record no. 2093, Dickinson-Berry, 1873; microfilm, La Salle County (Illinois) Genealogy Guild, Ottawa.

Board for the Certification of Genealogists, The BCG Genealogical Standards Manual (Washington DC: BCG, 2000), 8-9.

Harold Henderson, "An Index Is a Treasure Map -- Do You Dig?," Indiana Genealogist, vol.19, no. 3 (September 2008):147-150.

Elizabeth Shown Mills, Evidence Explained (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 2007), 16.


Harold Henderson, "Marriage Records and Indexes: Choose the Original," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 16 October 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.


 

Illinois quarterly spring issue

The Illinois State Genealogical Society Quarterly (Spring, volume 43 number 1) features documented articles about two professional men. Neither has known living descendants.

Banker William Moody Dustin (1828-1917) of Lincoln, Logan County, Illinois, had troubles both financial and marital. (You'll feel better about your taxes.)

Physician Carl Clement Lawry (1876-1953) of Freedom Township and the tiny town of Harding in La Salle County, was the more successful. And for researchers in that area, he left us a valuable resource -- his 1911-1916 account book, with well over a thousand entries alphabetized and transcribed in the magazine. The article includes a well-deserved shout-out to the La Salle County Genealogy Guild.

More Midwestern Death Records Online

Joe Beine's 1 September addition to his indispensable Online Searchable Death Indexes & Records includes new and added materials for:

Cook and La Salle counties in Illinois;

Shelby County, Indiana;

Arenac, Jackson, Monroe, and Van Buren counties in Michigan, plus an update on statewide listings 1897-1920;

Erie, Lucas, Summit, and Wood counties in Ohio; and

Marathon County, Wisconsin.

IMHO, anyone who can put their finger on Arenac County without resorting to Google ought to get a free cemetery lookup at least!

Methodology Monday in La Salle County, Illinois

Last week I spent a profitable hour at the La Salle County Genealogy Guild (you'll see their sign on southbound Illinois Route 23 in downtown Ottawa), where Jim Collins kept me hopping between all the newspaper indexes and probates and county histories and cemetery readings collected in their building. We were disappointed that the relevant 1873 marriage license (on microfilm) was too old to be likely to contain any juicy information like parents' names.

But we looked at it anyway -- and a good thing, too. In addition to the preprinted forms was a handwritten note, where the bride's father gave consent to "the marriage of my adopted daughter."

There's nothing sophisticated or earthshaking about the idea of looking at original records. (Hey, it's the middle of August! You want sophisticated, you have to wait until the Midwestern average temperature gets below 70!) This is just a reminder that the reason for looking is not because it's a Rule, but because you really don't know how that record might change what seemed like a genealogically unproblematic situation.

"Change," of course, is a euphemism. Elizabeth Shown Mills puts the point more sharply in Evidence Explained {16}: "Any relevant record that goes unexamined is a land mine waiting to explode our premature theories."

North Central Illinois histories...

...digitized by Illinois Harvest recently:

History of Grundy County, Illinois (Chicago: O.L. Basken & Co., 1882).

History of La Salle County, Illinois: Its Topography..., by Elmer Baldwin (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1877). 552 pp.

The Past & Present of La Salle County, Illinois (Chicago: H. F. Kett & Co., 1877). 653 pages.

Biographical and Genealogical Record of La Salle County, Illinois, volumes 1 and 2 (Chicago: Lewis Pub. Co., 1900). 798 pages.

La Salle County Centennial, 1831-1931: Directory of Former Ottawa Residents (Ottawa: Ottawa Republican-Times, 1931?). 48 pages.

Peru, Illinois Centennial May 25-26, 1935: Commemorating One Hundred Years of Peru's Existence (Peru: Peru Historical Committee, 1935). 63 pages.

La Salle, Illinois: An Historical Sketch (La Salle: La Salle Centennial Committee, 1952). 66 pages.

Illinois Harvest -- yet more digitized local histories, post 3

Historical and Biographical Record of Douglas County, Illinois, by John M. Gresham (Logansport, Indiana: Wilson, Humphreys & Co., 1900).

History of Dwight, from 1853 to 1894, by William G. Dustin (Dwight: Dustin & Wassell, 1894?). Dwight, best known these days for being a stop along I-55 between Chicago and Springfield, is in northeast Livingston County.

History of Stark County, Illinois, and Its People (Chicago: Pioneer Publishing Co., 1916), in two volumes. I guess some small counties are bigger than they look.

The Story of Streator, by John Elias Williams (Streator: The Independent-Times, 1912). On the south edge of La Salle County, just lapping the Livingston County line.

Prairie Farmer's Director of Edgar County, Illinois. Not a history but a useful snapshot in time.