AncestorNews: Online Marriage Indexes

A couple of years ago, I cracked one of my brick walls thanks to a death certificate and a marriage record. I could not find records about my great-great-grandfather. However, after obtaining the death certificate of my great-grandfather, I learned that his mother’s maiden name was Hatton and that she was from Indiana.

When I searched an online database, I discovered that marriage of Lydia Hatton to John “Hendricks.” Of course I had never found John’s record, because I was looking for Hendrickson.

There are an increasing number of online marriage databases, including the Western States Marriage Record index. This index has been extracted from counties in the Western part of the United States, including Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming, Washington, Oregon and California. This is not a complete index, but so far there are 267,000 records in the searchable database. Additional records are being added daily.

Search this database at abish.ricks.edu/fhc/gbsearch.asp.

Other online marriage databases:

• Kentucky Marriage Index for 1973-1993
ukcc.uky.edu/~vitalrec

• Ontario, Canada Marriage Indexes
www.geocities.com/SoHo/Gallery/5715/marriage.html

• Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, 17631900
www.sos.state.il.us/departments/archives/databases.html

• Alabama Marriages before 1825
www.imagin.net/~tracers/alabama_marriages_before_1825.htm

• Indiana Marriages Through 1850
www.statelib.lib.in.us/www/indiana/genealogy/mirr.html

• Maine Marriages 1892-1966
thor.ddp.state.me.us/archives/plsql/archdev.Marriage_Archive.search_form