So Many Marriage Records Online

My day job involves scouring records. My favorite hobby also has me searching and occasionally finding records. I especially like finding a new database of marriage records.

http://familysearch.org/ is uploading thousands of records each week with the help of volunteers who both scan, upload and occasionally transcribe to prepare indexes. Best of all, Familysearch is a FREE site. It recently partnered with Ancestry.com (an awesome but NOT free site) on some projects. 

Index = One of my favorite words. Without an index one must pore through page after page looking for a keyword. FamilySearch doesn't always have indexes (yet) for their many databases. Luckily there is an index for California County Marriages - 1850 to 1952, which is where I've spent the last 90 minutes.

Here are a few copies of marriage licenses of my "kin" that I was thrilled to find.

Upvote Upvoted 5
9 responses
So nice of clerks to share the data now. I recall sending a money order off with a letter detailing who married whom. Weeks later receiving a card or phone call saying "no such Smith in our database." Well and good, but I hadn't asked for a SMITH marriage license. Again specifying the full names of the couple and ages. And weeks later, a copy would arrive. Pity my clan didn't live in California until after 1960 or else I would use this database. Lucky you.
— Adele
In response to my dear Aunt's private query, here's a little info on Arley Willhelm. Arley is, or was, my Aunt's "first cousin once removed." That means they both share a great-grandfather. In this case, Welk Wilhelm, the Confederate, who disappeared in the middle 1880s. Arley, the second of four children to James Arthur Willhelm and Emily Virdie (Baze), was born in Texas 9 Sept. 1898 and died in Wheatland, Yuba County, California on 6 Feb 1994. I don't know when he moved to California, but he was living in Ripon in 1918 at the time of the draft for the Great War. In 1930 he was living in Modesto. The 1940 Census finds his family in Berkeley. Lois Marie wrote: "Arley and his wife Alice attended my parent's 50th wedding anniversary party. They lived in Wheatland, CA. Arley, his wife Alice, Clyde and his wife Blanche visited my parents in St. Helena on another occasion." I find only one child of Arley's, a Marilyn(n) E. Zepp (married Gene Zepp in 1962) who was born 22 Feb 1930, and passed 23 Oct 1972 in Sutter, California. We had cousins nearby and didn't know.
— History Sleuth
Mitch Margaretich was my G-Uncle Johnny's brother. I also research Johnny's family and so consider his siblings distant kin. For the longest time I did NOT know their parents' names. So finding any bit of proof to link them all together, makes my day. This marriage license is one more pebble off that "brick wall" that for so long had me stumped on Johnny's ancestry.
— History Sleuth
Your grandpa, Arthur Willhelm, made a remark one time when we were driving past Wheatland, that he thought he had a relative that lived there. That is the last I ever heard of it, and I don't remember the name Arley. I wonder why my daad did not have the interest in looking him up.
— Nancy Anderson
History Sleuth upvoted this post.
4 visitors upvoted this post.
Add Website URL »