21 January 2011

Finding Ontario marriage records online

New online at the FamilySearch website as of 14 January are 363,464 indexed Ontario marriage record transcriptions between 1869 and 1927.

As illustrated in the image on the left the transcription is reasonably complete and contains a sufficient source information to allow you to go directly to view the original record on microfilm.

This is the second Ontario marriage database on FamilySearch. Ontario Marriages, 1800-1910 has just 28,574 records for a few places, taken from the 1998 CD set "North America Vital Records Index."

If you have access to the Ancestry Canadian collection, either through subscription or one of many a public access sites, such as your local public library, then you have ready access to a broader range of sources for Ontario marriages.

Ontario, Canada Marriages, 1801-1926 is a collection of approximately 3.2 million marriages the majority of which are from Registrations of Marriages, 1869-1926 (MS 932, Archives of Ontario) and include images of the original record.

As discussed in a recent post and comments, you may have difficulty specifying a location for this database. Suggestions are to try entering the location as a keyword, or use Ancestry's "Old Search" form.

Ancestry also lists  Ontario, Canada, Catholic Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1747-1967 with 1,327,293 records; Ontario, Canada, County Marriage Registers, 1858-1869 with 158,063 records; and some smaller databases.

Don't overlook other sources for marriages, usually not online. Anglican and United Churches have marriage registers, usually available at some centralized archive. Local newspapers often carried a marriage announcement with a list of attendees, and sometime extended descriptions of the dresses of the bride and other ladies attending.

































































































































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