Application For Genealogy Copy Of Marriage License: Fill & Download for Free

A marriage license application is probably the most common. In the U.S. these are usually located at the county courthouse. Some have been scanned online while other communities haven’t done so or allowed it.This document usually includes the name, occupation, age, where each was living, parents names and residence, birthplace of parents, date of marriage, and location (church, etc) of marriage. The record usually also contains the bride’s and groom’s signature.I say usually because record keeping wasn’t always consistent. My gr-grandparents 1889 marriage license application includes their names. Period. Nothing else including anything from the clerk.A marriage license is a piece of paper the couple might hang in their house to show they were married. These are hard to find since there was no ‘copy’ kept by a government or religious organization. It usually contains less information than the application (above).Marriage banns are announcements in a local newspaper that announce the couple plan to marry. It doesn’t prove they did marry but it’s close. The banns had to announce the planned marriage in case one of them wasn’t eligible to get married… like already being married to someone else. Sometimes, church bulletins would also print the banns; otherwise, they’d be read out (orally) in church too but we can’t document that.Other records provide even less evidence a couple were married or, at least, living together as husband and wife. Remember that in the U.S. common law marriage was recognized in most jurisdictions if the couple lived as if they were married for a length of time, such as 5 or 7 or 10 years. In many places, it became just as legally binding. So you look for the relationship being mentioned in other records such as the census, wills / probate, deeds / land transactions, and even newspaper articles. These records don’t usually document how long the couple were married or when they wed but they provide secondary proof that the couple were married.

Why do we have to pay? My guess is that they are in business to make money. They have to pay staff, licensing fees, etc. In reality, it’s a question to ask the company who is charging for their information.Many have already answered with great information but here are some other FREE resources to help you find your ancestors.Call your local libraries to find out if any of them have free access to “Heritage Quest”. Most do. Heritage Quest has all Census records as well as Revolutionary War records and more.Search Google Books for surnames you are in search of. Those that aren’t available for reading, go to WORLDCAT The World's Largest Library Catalog to determine which libraries have the book. Do an inter-library loan through your local library. They will need to know the full name of the book, ISBN number, publisher, publication date and volume number if applicable. Also make a note of which pages your family information appears.Check The Bureau of Land Management website for information on land your family owned or received through proclamation.Go to Free Genealogy and Family History Online - The USGenWeb Project and search your family surname in states where they lived. Information transcribed and available varies from state to state but this Project holds a gold mine of information for every state in the nation.This is an excellent resource provided by Brigham Young University for documenting life events for ancestors who lived in the western states: Special Collections . In addition, BYU has available a huge library of books that can be viewed online.Make use of our National Archives and Records Administration. There’s tons of information on veterans plus documents and photos. It’s a gem of a resource. If you live near Washington, DC, go to the actual government building. In the 80s I spent as much time there as I could and found a lot of information on my ancestors. Access was free in the 80s.You can call the clerk of the county in which your ancestor resided and ask how to obtain life event documents. You have to pay for the document but it’s usually not very much. The most I paid was $10 for a marriage license.Search for and use digital collections that most states now make available to the public. Using your favorite search engine type in: “digital archives” ~<state you want to search>. Include quotes and tilde. You’ll get back a link to the state’s digital collection of records. For instance, the state of Washington has marriage, birth, death records, early pioneer records, court documents and more.Remember too there are Random Acts of Kindness (RAOK). You can do a search for persons who are willing to go to a library in another state to look for your ancestor. All at no charge. (I found my grandfather married to his third wife by contacting a RAOK volunteer. She went to the courthouse and found their marriage certificate. No one knew my gr-grandparents names until I received that document. Both my gr-grandmother (her maiden name) and gr-grandfather were listed in addition to where my grandfather “thought” they each were born.)Document every single piece of family information you find: Record in detail the Who-What-When-Where-How of every person you talk to, website you visit, life event record you order and receive, books that have your ancestors included. Keep emails from those who give you permission to use their photos (including find-a-grave, ancestry, private sites. No Permission - No Can Use)….and the list goes on.These 10 tips should help get you started finding your ancestors. If you have any questions, leave a comment or send me a message! None of these resources will cost you anything unless you request a copy of a document.Good luck with your search. Thanks for the A2A!Carol

You can use the following apps for thisShoeboxThe internet has made filling out the family tree fun and easy. Ancestry.com touts itself as having the largest collection of genealogical data available online, with access to more than 2 million names from thousands of databases.To use its photo scanner app, Shoebox (available for both Android and iPhone), you have to sign in on Genealogy, Family Trees & Family History Records, though you can opt out of uploading your scans to an Genealogy, Family Trees & Family History Records family tree.Shoebox detects the edges of your photo and auto-corrects the perspective. Once you’ve saved your crop, you can add details like names (you can tag family members), places, dates and a caption. The app does not allow you to make adjustments for brightness or contrast. Nor does it offer special-effect filters.For the best quality, use the photo saved to your Camera Roll. I learned this by sharing to my email and found that the file shared while in the Shoebox app was a lower resolution. The one from my Camera Roll was better but I could still see pixelated areas in the shadows and midtones. Picture No. 5 in the gallery above, the team picture with the clock in the background, turned out to be the best of the two Shoebox scans shown because it was of an 8-by-10-inch photo, whereas No. 6 was a 3-by-5-inch print.CamScanner by InsigI initially overlooked CamScanner during my research because it is known primarily as a document scanner. But Rachel LaCour Niesen, who curates @savefamilyphotos on Instagram and was recently profiled by Cult of Mac, recommended it to me for its simplicity.Like Shoebox, CamScanner’s cropping tool allows you to correct crooked scans. Controls let you adjust contrast, brightness and midtones. There are some other basic tools to enhance black-and-white or color, but this is definitely not an app to create art. During my CamScanner tests, I initially did not notice some colors in the room that were reflecting onto the glossy surface of the print. The app’s “Gray Mode” made the reflection less noticeable.CamScanner might be the best go-to tool for the genealogists because of what it can do for documents, like baptism certificates or marriage licenses, that they might encounter during research. Unfortunately, all scans are saved as PDFs. I wish CamScanner provided the option to save as a JPEG. To get one, you could convert your PDF or go to your Camera Roll, where the scan is saved as a JPEG.Pic Scanner by App InitioPic Scanner offers a variety of tools and is deserving of the rave reviews it has received elsewhere. It is available for iPhone and iPads only.If you use an iPad, you can scan up to three photos at a time. While this speeds up your scanning if you’re working through a stack of photos, I recommend doing one photo per scan so you don’t compromise resolution. You might want to make a print later.After you make your copy, tap “Use” to give you a screen of editing controls. You can rotate the photo, tinker with brightness and contrast, and add effects like sepia, hue adjustment, vignetting and sharpening.You can add names, dates and a description; create albums; and share images.