Friday, February 12, 2016

Searching the New Findmypast U.S. Marriage Collection

Findmypast announced their new U.S. Marriage Collection last week - see Findmypast Announces Largest Online Collection of U.S. Marriages From 1650-2010 (posted 4 February 2016).

I finally had a chance to work in this database today, and like what I see.  I have a Findmypast subscription, so the opening screen may look different from what other users see.  

1)  Here is the home page:



2)  At the bottom of the screen above, the link to "Explore 33 million NEW U.S. marriage records."  I clicked on it to see the search page for this collection:


3)  I entered "seaver" in the surname field, chose no name variants, and the search results included 2,311 entries:


4)  I scrolled down a bit, and found an entry for an Archer W. Seaver who married a Lillian in 1923 in Texas.  I checked my RootsMagic database, and I did not have a marriage date for them, so I clicked on the blue "transcription" icon on the right side of the page, and saw the indexed information:


Archer W. Seaver, age 22, married Lillian Carlson, age 19, on 29 August 1923 in El Paso County, Texas.  Some entries provide the parents names on the record.

5)  There was a blue icon to see the record image on the transcription page, so I clicked on that and saw the marriage license and marriage return:


The marriage license provided the birth date and birth place of both parties, plus signatures.

6)  Not every entry in the U.S. Marriage Collection has an image of a license or return, but they all have a transcription of the indexed information.  

7)  A source citation?  Here is one for this marriage record:

"United States Marriages," indexed database, Findmypast (http://www.findmypast.com : accessed 12 February 2016), El Paso County, Texas, Archer W. Seaver and Lillian Carlson marriage entry, 1923; citing original data from El Paso County, Texas vital records, provided on FHL US/CAN Microfilm 25,067.

8)  At present, there are 33 million records in this collection, and eventually it will be 100 million records or more.  There is often more than one entry for a specific marriage.

I have over 2,300 entries just for Seaver alone to mine in this collection.  Some of them are in other record collections on FamilySearch and Ancestry.com, but there are quite a few I haven't seen before.

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Copyright (c) 2016, Randall J. Seaver

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5 comments:

Bonnie said...

I did the same thing without a subscription for my surname. They had nothing. I tried searching just on a state and they told me they had nothing in the free offering for PA while I was at their booth at RootsTech. Not a full database. Good PR, poor delivery.

Bonnie said...

I stand corrected. They now have PA available, it wasn't at RootsTech.

Linda Stufflebean said...

I tried searching for five very common surnames in Maine, 1850 and chose 40 years plus or minus. Not a single hit came up so I don't think they have anything for Maine. Is there a way to check for states in the database? I couldn't find one.

Kay said...

>7) A source citation? Here is one for this marriage record:

"United States Marriages," indexed database, Findmypast (http://www.findmypast.com : accessed 12 February 2016), El Paso County, Texas, Archer W. Seaver and Lillian Carlson marriage entry, 1923; citing original data from El Paso County, Texas vital records, provided on FHL US/CAN Microfilm 25,067.

Randy: How did you come up with that much info for the source citation. That was my frustration when I went in there: other than listing a source as United States Marriages database found at Findmypast website, I could only guess byeond that as to where they actually got the info. Did you track each one back to FamilySearch to get more details of where it came from (ie. El Paso County, Texas vital records), or did you just assume that based on what little info you could see in the image?

- Kay

JimFMP said...

Hi all,

Jim from Findmypast here. The states available in this tranche of records are here, however we'll be adding more quarterly, so be sure to add your tree to FMP and we'll notify you when we have new Hints available on new states as and when they are added:

Tennessee, County Marriages, 1790-1950
Ohio, County Marriages, 1789-2013
Pennsylvania, County Marriages, 1885-1950
Iowa, County Marriages, 1838-1934
Alabama, County Marriages, 1809-1950
North Carolina, County Marriages, 1762-1979
Texas, County Marriage Records, 1837-1977
Florida Marriages, 1830-1993
Massachusetts Marriages, 1841-1915
Oklahoma, County Marriages, 1890-1995
New York, County Marriages, 1847-1848; 1908-1936
Kentucky, County Marriages, 1797-1954
District of Columbia Marriages, 1811-1950
Colorado Statewide Marriage Index, 1853-2006
California, County Marriages, 1850-1952
Michigan, County Marriages, 1820-1935
Texas, County Marriage Index, 1837-1977
Missouri, County Marriage, Naturalization, and Court Records, 1800-1991