United States Marriage Information in Newspapers (National Institute)

Marriage Announcements
There are a number of different ways that we may find a marriage or union announced in the newspaper. And it is important to remember that a license or engagement does not mean that a marriage took place.

In addition to the actual marriage announcement, the other two most common listings of marriages are the listing of the marriage licenses applied for, usually published by the court or for the county, and the engagement announcements.

Engagement Notices
Engagement notices are not as popular as the marriage announcements, at least not until the 1900s. And from personal experience in my own family, having found three announcements of engagement for one woman—and an entry in a diary that her mother wasn’t going to put any more announcements because the woman broke off each engagement—an announcement of an upcoming marriage does not ensure that a wedding takes place.

Bickers - Mattingly Marriage The Atlanta Constitution, September 2, 1910, Atlanta, Georgia.



Even when the engagement or the announcement of the upcoming marital vows seems close, such as is seen here with the upcoming marriage of Miss Frances Bickers and Mr. B.S. Mattingly, Jr., which was announced in the paper on September 2, 1910 and was due to take place on September 10, 1910, it is still possible that they did not get married. However, what this does offer is a date to check. Researching the newspapers from September 10th to the 15th to see if further information is shared would be in order. And given that this was a society wedding, it is likely that additional information might have been shared once the wedding took place.

Many times, as we see with this next engagement, no actual date of the nuptials is included, though again because this was a society engagement, there are lots of names and some information about the party.

Announcements such as this were as much about who was there as about the engagement itself. In society it was important to be seen at all the right parties, and get your name in the society pages as often as possible, at least as long as it was mentioned favorably.

There are some less flamboyant announcements of engagements, that didn’t include the color of the decorations, but instead supply you, the genealogist, with some very useful information.

This engagement in the New York Times is a bounty of information that may lead the researcher to finding when Lilla’s first marriage took place, and perhaps searching for additional entries in the newspaper for her parents.

By far the best engagement announcements a genealogist wants to find are those that not only mention names of parents, but also include the date of the upcoming nuptials. While the marriage may not take place, at least such an announcement gives you a new date to search, and as we see below, it is quite some time after the engagement announcement. While it would be nice to have an exact date of the wedding, having at least a month when the event is scheduled is better than nothing, allowing you to skip those intervening months between the engagement announcement and the approximate time of the wedding.

Marriage License Notices
The other marriage type announcement that does not guarantee the date of the marriage is the list of marriage licenses issued by the county court clerk for a given period, usually the past week.

Courier-Journal Courier-Journal, January 1, 1892, Louisville, Kentucky.



While you may feel that you can dismiss these entries as useless, they can serve a purpose when the existing marriage records have not been indexed. What these license lists supply is a starting point with your search of the actual marriage records. In many instances, the marriage did take place shortly after the license was issued, thus narrowing the number of pages you must search considerably.

Marriage Announcements
The most sought marriage information in the newspaper is that of the marriage announcement. Such announcements at the least tell you who the bride and groom were and when they were married. Simple marriage notices, are often found just before or just after the death notices. They are usually a sentence or two at the most, and are intended to lead the researcher to additional resources. However, in the case of a county that has had a courthouse fire or is missing records, this newspaper announcement may be all the proof you will have.

Gettysburg Compiler Gettysburg Compiler, March 21, 1821, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.



This marriage notice found in the Gettysburg Compiler is the standard notice, and in fact gives a little more information in that the father of the bride is mentioned. The mentioning of the minister who married them is an advantage because you might be able to further investigate the minister and determine the faith in which the marriage took place. This could help you in finding additional family records such as baptisms or burials, even though they may not be published in subsequent newspapers.

Marriage notices are often found listed with the death and funeral notices. These notices are usually simple, giving just the basic of information of the names of the bride and groom and perhaps the minister who officiated.

However, marriage announcements often appear in many other places in the newspaper. If the family in question was wealthy or well-known in the community, it is possible that the wedding was mentioned in the society column.

While the Kelpin-Block marriage announcement was found in the Society section of the paper, it told little more than that of a standard marriage notice, adding only the church and where the couple was honeymooning.

Usually when a marriage is announced in the society pages, you will find a lot more detail; including details about what some of the bridal party were wearing or additional descriptions that give you insight into character or physical appearance of an ancestor.

Tyler-Gresham

While this is another society wedding, you may find that in smaller communities the editor included many details about the wedding because they only have a few each year. Often smaller community weddings include details about the receptions that follow or mention individuals of note in the town that came to the wedding.

Sometimes the wedding announcement is more a news item than a blurb because of other things that transpired at the time. Such announcements may be found anywhere in the newspaper, and are yet another reason that the newspaper should at least be skimmed. Many of them until the 1900s were eight pages or less, making it easy to look through them in a relatively short period of time.

Romance Shattered The Atlanta Constitution, September 2, 1910, Atlanta, Georgia.



In this particular example, not only do you get information about the wedding, but you get a lot more. Not only do you find out where and when the marriage took place, but you find out a lot about groom, some of it less than flattering, but certainly offering additional research avenues if he was somehow related to your family tree.

Elopements
Another major news event related to marriages is when the couple eloped. It often resulted in annulments, or other major repercussions, which may be researchable in court or other records, but if nothing else, the news of the couple is usually detailed.

Wedding Anniversaries
Anniversary announcements are often quite useful to genealogists, especially when they mark those momentous milestones, such as silver (25 years) or golden (50 years) anniversaries. They are often filled with information about when the couple met, and how old they are now. It may also name descendants of the couple. At the very least, it gives you a year in which to focus your energy looking for a marriage record.

As you can see there are many different ways in which you can find out about marriages through the use of newspapers. Some supply you with great detail, while others simply infer and event or when the event took place, requiring additional research.

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Information in this Wiki page is excerpted from the online course US: Newspaper Records offered by The National Institute for Genealogical Studies. To learn more about this course or other courses available from the Institute, see our website. We can be contacted at [mailto:wiki@genealogicalstudies.com wiki@genealogicalstudies.com]

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