[or-roots] Researching Marriage records

[SAWYER Layne G]

OR-Rooters,

One of the staff here at the Archives is posting a series on "how to research marriage records" on our Facebook page. I thought the list might be interested as well.  I will post them as separate messages.  Here is the first in the series.

RESEARCHING MARRIAGE RECORDS IN THE OREGON STATE ARCHIVES

You might think that locating an old marriage record would be a fairly simple process. That's a reasonable assumption.  However, you would be mistaken!  In reality, it can be a challenge - though  not usually an insurmountable one. Like most government records from way back in the day, things were not always done in a consistent manner from county to county, and from time period to time period.

This week I will walk you through the best ways to have success in locating old Oregon marriage records here at the Archives. The first step in understanding how to negotiate old marriage records is to realize there are TWO fundamental types:

STATEWIDE MARRIAGE RETURNS - these are marriage records generated by the state's vital records office that consist of a standard form on which was recorded basic information obtained from the county in which the marriage occurred.

COUNTY MARRIAGE RECORDS - These are records created by the counties themselves, and can consist of individual certificates, or entries in volumes.  The contents of these records varies widely from county to county and from time period to time period.

MARRIAGE RECORDS THAT RARELY EXIST TODAY

Two types of records that were generated in the process of documenting marriages are rarely found in the present:  the marriage license application, and the marriage license itself. This is because the county offices understandably viewed these records as unnecessary once the marriage had occurred (or the effective period of the license had passed), and were usually disposed of.  We have very few marriage licenses and applications among the many marriage records we have here at the State Archives.

Future posts in this series will include images of typical records, but because the listserve software doesn't handle attachments and large messages I will not include the images.  Please feel free to visit our Facebook page if you would like to see the images as well as the postings.

Enjoy,

Layne Sawyer
List Mom
Oregon State Archives
(503)378-5198


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