Are you struggling to find the date of when your ancestor couple got married? today we're going to
talk about different strategies for finding the dates of someone getting hitched on your family
tree. Howdy I'm Devon Noel Lee with Family History Fanatics where we love to help you
climb your family tree and have a whole lot of fun along the way. If you're new to family
history research be sure to check the link in the description for our free guide to help beginners
get started successfully climbing their family tree. Now before we start talking about records
we need to consider why we might not find a record or a date for our ancestors. First maybe your
ancestors didn't formally marry. And so there isn't going to be a marriage certificate with
a church or with a civil authority. That didn't mean they didn't marry because in some cultures
such as jumping African- Americans in the South who were enslaved. They jumped the broom because
they weren't allowed to get married. Some cultures did hand-fasting which could be
a inappropriate marriage or just that's what they did. So consider that they didn't do something
formal even though they do present themselves as married in future documents. And it has to be said
just because a child was created doesn't mean the biological father and the biological mother ever
married. So keep that in mind. It is possible that they presented themselves as married and
lived as married and it's also possible that it was an illegitimate child. The other reasons why
you might not be finding a marriage date is maybe they got married in a place that
you weren't expecting. Sometimes this is a Gretna Green where people ran off to get married because
it was the marriage mill of less. Or it the laws were too restrictive and it was easier to get
married somewhere else. There's lots of reasons why people get married in different locations.
Sometimes they get married in different locations because they're migrating. If you ever think
of that maybe they got hitched along the way. They met on a boat got hitched and wound up in,
you know, somewhere Wisconsin. So check that out. Maybe they got married in a different location.
And finally you might not be finding when they got married because you're not looking
early enough. Maybe the wife got married when she was 12 or 14. I mean it has happened.
Or maybe they got married several years to a decade after they started having children. So
these are some of the reasons why you're not necessarily finding a marriage date. So what
are you gonna do in order to see if you can find the answer to when your, and where your,
ancestor got married. The first thing you need to do is change your search strategies
and as Ellen Thomas Jennings, the Family History Hound, says “Try a less is more strategy.”
You need to use various spellings and you need to pay attention to those boundary changes.
Try to implement the use of wild cards in order to overcome the spelling variations. Try those no
name and no surname searches and sometimes just go on a wild goose chase because you never know where
your ancestor is going to show up. Maybe they change their names. Who knows? but those are some
of the strategies you can use to search online to find the record. The next thing you want to do is
make sure that you are aware of the marriage laws because that's going to dictate sometimes
when they elope. Sometimes when they get married, sometimes the laws are who can marry and when.
So we want to know the laws and the customs. And then you need to recognize that marriage
certificates are modern documentation. The further back in time you go unless they are married at a
church you might not find a marriage date for you. But you can use substitute records. yes you can.
And then there are a number of them listed over on my blog familyhistoryfanatics.com/blog.
you'll find the direct link to this post in the show notes. But I do want to highlight a
couple of records that could be of interest to you. The first one is divorce records.
In order to get a divorce you have to have been married.
And so you want to go and check out those divorce records. A number of them have been digitized.
Not a lot of them have been made searchable. So you will have to browse the collection or you
might have to contact a county office. I did this for a four generation research project that I did
and the people had no problem scanning a copy and sending me the documentation. But sometimes you're
gonna luck out because in this divorce degree they didn't remember when they got married.
So check out divorce records to try to find out when your ancestor got married. Another
collection you can check out are church records. Now church records for me are harder right now
to research because not a lot of them are online. If you do have catholic ancestors in a few of the
lucky cities that are available on FindMyPast. Then you can search those catholic records.
But not every church has their records available online. you may only find an index
either on Usgen web or FamilySearch or various websites. Be sure to search for church records
and if you're lucky they're online. If not maybe you can figure out which churches serve the area
where your ancestor lived. Make sure you look for boundaries and geographical features that
might push them somewhere else. Also consider that they just went to the local church because it was
there. And they wanted a church marriage even if it wasn't the religion they were practicing. Keep
in mind there are some churches that won't marry you regardless. And so check out the
church records, see what you can find. Just be aware there are a lot more limitations in being
able to do pajama genealogy for church records. Now another one you may consider is county
histories. Now county histories are not original records but sometimes county histories had detail
that nobody else has. Now I found this county history for August County, Virginia over on
the internet archive. And notice there was a Thomas Lewis married to Jane in January 26,
1749. And so this is not only just a published genealogy but it's put in a county history with
biographical information about the original settlers of that area. So go ahead and give
those a try. Leave no stone unturned and see what you can find. Just to reiterate there are a lot
of records that you want to go explore to find potential dates for your ancestors marriage. And
they are found on the blog post. But keep in mind even if you just get a year that they are married.
That might be all you get and that would be good enough. So see what you can find and then come
back and tell me your success stories or your biggest frustrations in the comments below.
Now if you missed our video about what to do to try to find birth dates for your ancestors
check out this video above. And if you're ready for something new try out this video right here.