Highlights Archives
Marriage Records Index Goes Online
That's right. More than a million Wisconsin marriages can now be searched alongside births and deaths. Like its companions, the new marriage index began as a 1970s microfiche publication. That microfiche, unfortunately, ignored the marriages that took place in almost a third of Wisconsin counties. Luckily for genealogists, hard-working volunteers around the state indexed those counties from scratch over the last several years under the guidance of former Society staff member Judy Vezzetti, and so hundreds of thousands of additional names have been included in the online index that were never available anywhere before. The result is the only comprehensive Wisconsin marriage index that exists on the Web (or in any other format).
Like the birth and death indexes we published earlier this year, it only includes marriages recorded with state officials before September 30, 1907. These are indexed by both the bride's and groom's names, wherever possible, so in most cases there are two entries for each marriage. Researchers can discover their names, the county and city of the marriage, and its exact date. Paper copies of the actual marriage certificates can be ordered online for $15 each (Society members receive a 10-percent discount); any revenue above costs is invested in developing new online products and services.
Publication of the marriage index completes a project begun early last year after the Schoenleber Foundation of Milwaukee generously awarded the Society a grant to create an online index to all Wisconsin pre-1907 vital records. That grant has now enabled us to share about 2.5 million Wisconsin names — a million births, over a million marriages, and 400,000 deaths — with genealogists. All three types of records can be searched simultaneously, and searches can be limited to specific places and dates.
Birth, marriage and death records are essential to family history research, but they are not the only useful and interesting tools. Our Wisconsin Name Index leads to more than 150,000 obituaries, personal sketches, and other short biographies of Wisconsin people. Researchers can then look these up in their hometown libraries or order paper copies online. Thousands of pictures of ancestors and their home towns can be seen for free at Wisconsin Historical Images, and 16,000 historical newspaper articles about pioneer settlers and their communities are available free in the Wisconsin Local History & Biography Articles site. The nearly 10,000 entries in our free Dictionary of Wisconsin History include the exact locations of thousands of small Wisconsin towns, each with a map and aerial photo linked to it. The Dictionary also includes cross references for hundreds of defunct or obsolete place names, so if you've had trouble figuring out where Statesburg or Kilbourn City were, it should solve your problem.
Military records are another important source. Genealogists can look up Civil War soldiers in our online Roster of Wisconsin Volunteers and order copies of Wisconsin Civil War Service Records on more than 90,000 of them. These typically show the soldier's name, regiment, company, rank, date of mustering (enrollment) into service, and often include such details as birthplace, age, residence, occupation, marital status, physical description, muster-out date and service notes. Three newly mounted volumes list all the Civil War veterans living in Wisconsin in 1885, 1895 and 1905, with details of their service and muster rolls for the Black Hawk War and Winnebago War of 1827 have also just been published online.
As you test these new resources, be sure to click on the link at the bottom of every page that says "Email this page to a friend" and let your genealogical allies know about what you find.
:: Posted May 17, 2006
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