Friday, May 21, 2010

Nebraska Marriages (1855-1995) on FamilySearch Record Search

...
I found more interesting information about my great-great-aunt, Matie (Smith) (Chenerry) (Cehway) Morrill (1866-1928) on the LDS FamilySearch Record Search site in the Nebraska Marriages (1855-1995).

I knew that she had married George Chenery in 1889 from family letters, but I didn't know much about the man. The information in the marriage record shows:

* Groom's Name: George M. Chenery
* Groom's Birth Date: 1854
* Groom's Birth Place: Bungay, England
* Groom's Age: 35
* Bride's Name: Mattie A. Smith
* Bride's birth Date: 1866
* Bride's Birth Place: Dodge County, WI
* Bride's Age: 23
* Marriage Date: 10 Dec 1889
* Marriage Place: McCook, Red Willow County, Nebraska
* Groom's Father's Name: Fred Chenery
* Groom's Mother's Name: Elizabeth Mills
* Bride's Father's Name: D.J. Smith
* Bride's Mother's Name: Abbie A. Vaax
* Groom's Race: White
* Groom's Marriage Status: Single
* Groom's Previous wife's Name: [blank]
* Bride's Race: White
* Bride's Marital Status: Single
* Bride's Previous Husband's Name: [blank]
* Indexing Project (Batch) Number: M00325-5
* System Origin: Nebraska-EASy
* Source Film Number: 1994204
* Reference Number: Vol2Item2Page397cn396

This particular record provided not only information about the marriage, but also information about the age, birthplace, and parents of the bride and groom. If they had been married previously, the name of their previous spouse would have been included.

Not every entry in this database has all of this information, of course, but it might!

Unfortunately, I cannot find the marriage of David D. Smith to Leava Smith in this database. I thought that they were married in McCook, but now I'm not sure.

Information about this database can be found on the FamilySearch Research Wiki here. There are "only" 195,329 records in this marriage database. That doesn't seem like many, considering it goes through 1995. But there's a note that they have not included recent records due to privacy concerns. By using a surname of "Smith," I determined that there are no records after 1915!

FHL Microfilm 1,994,204 is in the LDS Family History Library Catalog as:

Nebraska. Probate Court (Red Willow County) (Main Author), Marriage records, 1874-1993; index, 1845-1993 (Microfilm of original records at the Red Willow County Courthouse, McCook, Nebraska).

Marriage records v. 1 1874-1900 v. 4 p. 1-101 1900 - FHL US/CAN Film [ 1994204]

That's interesting, because it doesn't indicate that Volumes 2 and 3 are on this microfilm, it just says Volume 1 and Volume 4. But Mattie Smith's marriage to George Chenery was in Volume 2 on page 397.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Great Find Randy, And thanks for shareing the data. Data is just stored all over the place, on earth and in cyber space. I guess it should keep us busy until the end of time. Maybe my marker should say "She finished her genealogy" because no matter how far I had succeeded it was finished for me the day I died!!!

KevinW said...

That database has to be woefully incomplete. I searched on the names of both husband and wife on three marriages of 1899, 1907, and 1916 and NONE of them came up.