There are many places where you can find Genealogy Records that
document your ancestors marriage but sometimes there
are marriage records that are available online in places you
had not considered. So today, we're going to talk about where
those places are located and be sure to check the show notes
which are linked in the description so you can access
all the links for the places that I featured today. One of
the first places that I go where ever I'm trying to do
genealogical research of any kind is I like to go to the
FamilySearch Wiki it is a great portal page I'll show you
some places that you're going to want to access and then I
will show you another portal page that I love. One of the
reasons why I like the Family Search Wiki is that it gives me
information as well as linkpoints. So here's an
example from the United States US Marriage Records and it goes
through and tells me how to find US Marriage Records
Records of Intent to Marry Records of Marriages things you
may find lots of great information and then I can
actually go to the separate localities within that larger
country and lots of great information so I had the
information and then I have the links so here's another example
how to find US Marriage Records and I can go to Maine click on
Maine and then it's going to tell me choose a time period so
if I want to find Marriage Records in Maine from 1892 to
1922 I scroll down there and I have information as well as
links what to try first second and third very well organized
but some of you say hey Devin that is very US centric well
what you want to do is type in on Google something to the
effect of your country plus Marriage Records plus family
search wiki now I could try to tell you how navigate through
the wiki to get here but I really like shortcuts and this
is my shortcuts. So, Jamaica Marriage Records, FamilySearch
Wiki and then I have a number of ones. Jamaica Online
Genealogy Records, Jamaica Marriage Records and so forth
and when I click on one of these and it has the Family
Search Wiki address. It's right up here, FamilySearch.org
slash Wiki. If I go to that, then, I'm coming to you and
it's going to tell me what to try to look for marriage
Records in Jamaica. You can try this for any country. Now, the
next portal page I want to introduce you to is Ancestors
Hunt. Ancestors Hunt has links to a lot of record collection
not just Marriage Records. So, let me introduce you to the
Ancestors Hunt Portal page. So, here you can see I'm on
Ancestors Hunt and I came down to Marriages and I can click
through scrolling down. It it segregated by state and you can
navigate through to the various state websites right here so
click on Georgia you will have ads I'm going to scroll down
here and then will give me some information some tips some
notes and then we'll start giving me links now some of
these will go to FamilySearch such as this one right here it
takes me to FamilySearch but it takes me directly to that
browse only image collection as well as some searchable ones
try another one Barton County Wedding Announcements and so on
and so forth now you see GenWeb we're going to be talking
about GenWeb here in a month in a moment but the important
thing to know is you often want to start with the portal
page to get to these little known websites because the
portal pages tend to know where these little known websites are
hiding for your specific location so give those a if you
know of some other portal pages that you like be sure to tell
us in the comment section below say favorite portal page and
then drop a link so the first little known or underutilized
place to look for Marriage Records happens to be with your
public libraries I can't tell you the number of times I get
contacted by a public librarian say hey can you let people know
we have these really great resources on our websites well
here's their wish is granted. For instance, in Montana, there
is the Billings Public Library website and when you go to the
Genealogy Records on there, you're going to find this
Billings Gazette which is a newspaper and I love newspapers
but the public library has gone through and indexed a number of
these vital record images in the newspapers and told you
where you can find this information. So, here's the
Billings Gazette Public Library website. So, I'm going to click
on this Vital Records J through L PDF. When I click on that,
zoom in and you're going to see, actually, this is a
resource for a lot of information but notice it says,
Marriage Event for Andrew Jackson in 1892, The Place is
Halbert and the newspaper says the Billings Gazette. You're
going to see the Billings Gazette in various other
Billings but this is the Billing Gazette so you know
that's column's going to be right. You see the location you
can find Marriage in all of these situations. Just because
the resource is there doesn't mean your ancestors going to be
found but if you're struggling to find your ancestors in
records for of marriage in Billings, Montana, here's
another place to look and I really hope you succeed but if
you know of a public library that does have some fantastic
vital resources on their pages, go ahead and drop a link in the
in the comment section of this video so other people can go
check it out and we can give these librarians some praise
for the work that they have done. The next little known or
underutilized place to look for your ancestors marriage
records is volunteer projects. Now, volunteer projects may or
may not have the actual images. They often have indexes to the
images and that can you in localities that don't have
their images online. Very very handy. So, let me go ahead and
show you two places that I consider volunteer projects.
Now, then, first of these volunteer project websites is
US Genealogy Resource that you can pick any location. Let's go
ahead and click Pennsylvania and then we can go through and
find Pennsylvania counties. Let's go ahead and do Mercer
and you're going to see the a number of different things that
are located here. Now, not every GenWeb website is going
to have all the information that you want to find Vital
Records but look, Birth, Marriage, and Death for Mercer
County and I can start seeing some record collections that
are over here. The next one is called Genealogy Trails and
Genealogy Trails currently has a number of broken images but
if you get into the states let's say Massachusetts you can
come through here and learn about the history of
Massachusetts go to a county and then start looking for
marriages within that county not bad this is an example
another example from Montana this is the Fergus County
Montana Genealogy Trails website and here's an index
that they have to various marriages and what I like is
some of these extra wives wife previously married wife
previously married so on and so forth you can see these extra
little notes that are taking place and so in while this
isn't an original record but it does give some support to
Volunteer Genealogy around the world who provided information
free for you at some point you want to become very familiar
with the record collections that the state archives have
for your location so here is an example so here is the
Secretary of State State Archives Collections which is
the Oregon Historical Records Index I want to look for a
marriage record for Alexander Fraser. So, I'm going to type
in just the surname Frazier. I'm going to leave the year
blank for now. I can always start broad and narrow down
something we talked about in previous videos. I'm going to
scroll down here to Marriage and I'm just going to go ahead
and do a broad search first. So, the search is right there.
Click search and bada bing bada boom. I found a marriage record
for Alexandra Frazier and it was in 1895 in Klapsop County
Oregon which is what I was looking for. Unfortunately, I
didn't see any other Fraziers so I can't do surname searches
but I could then go look for Yenru, his wife's surname and
see if there's any others that are having marriage records
with that surname but check out the state archives. You never
know what they're going to have. Some of them actually
have the digital images that you want and some of them just
get you the numbers here. There for instance, this number five
four five five A's, I can now contact the repository for this
Oregon State Archive that has this record and say, hey, can I
get the original? Now, as I was studying states in the
Southwest in the various record collections that they have, I
came across a special collection from the BYU Family
History research department and BYU Idaho. Now, I've also come
across various databases for a number of universities. I
believe there was in Virginia and there was one in
Pennsylvania. It all depends on the research studies that
various universities have. So, go ahead and check out the
universities in your area or serve the area in which your
ancestor lived or served your ethnic groups. I've seen some
ethnicity research projects that have been made available
online. So, let me show you the one I was talking about to get
you inspired to see if you can find some special collection at
various university So this is the Western State Marriage
Records Index over at the BYU Idaho special collections for
their Family History Department. What I like about
these special collections is they will often give you the
reasons why the collections are compiled and created, what to
expect, what's in them, what's not in them and so on and so
forth. So, a significant number of marriages from selected
counties in California, Western Colorado, Montana, Oregon,
Utah, Eastern Washington, and Miami are included. Um some
early marriages from New Mexico where I live which is how I
found this are also here and then they have a link to where
you can see what is included by counties. So, let's go ahead
and do New Mexico and then we can see the different counties.
I didn't expect Los Alamos County can be here because the
county was created in 1940, but I can see some of these other
counties that have some records. There's not a lot but
what they tell me in this instructions is that they this
is an ongoing project and new things are added all of the
time so check back often. Uh so let's go ahead and search the
Western Marriage Index who would search it just like you
would any other database and do a broad search and do something
narrow. Now, you have to pay attention to this one. I've
made the mistake of not making sure that I selected whether it
was a bride or a groom and then I get frustrated. So make sure
you look at the nuances for each day today. So I'm going to
do a groom search for Landborn. Getting married in Utah. Now,
notice they have, oops, let me show this to you. They have
Utah and Utah territory. So, make sure you choose the right
one. It's not the same. You have to be very specific in
this one. It's something you have to learn based on the
databases you're using but I want to see that they were
married in Utah. I'm going to go ahead and click search and I
have a number of landborns who were married in Utah. The one I
was looking for happen to be Alfred and here is the
information and It tells me it's in the Cache County
Records volume seven page 8. Now, I have the information and
I can go over to Cash County, Utah and look for that specific
record. If I'm struggling to find it somewhere else,
sometimes I come to this database and it'll give me the
information to go elsewhere. They have had a number of
different collections that appear in this database rather
than just county records. The the depth is pretty broad and
I'm I'm pretty impressed with it. So, did I miss anything
that people aren't utilizing? I mean, sure we can say go to
Family Search Ancestry, Find My Pies, My Heritage and go to the
National Archives for various records but I want to know
where if there's something that's not being utilized that
is a dirty little secret or under utilized secret in
Genealogy to Find Marriage Records for your ancestors. Be
sure to share all of that in the comments below. Thanks for
watching. If you want to learn more Genealogy be sure to check
out the playlist right above and if you want to see the
latest video from Family History Fanatics, check out
this one right here. There are many places where you can find
Jimeal Giaova.