Missouri Marriage Records - What number to use in reference field
This question may have been asked already but I can't find it. The field help for the Reference Number states:
"Type the page number, record number, license number, or certificate number as it was written."
What, if any, number should be recorded?
https://www.familysearch.org/indexing/batch/c5e449f9-6df3-4669-ac60-56d16150d487
Answers
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I get "unauthorized" message when trying to open that batch. In addition I cannot find any Missouri Marriage Project. I can only therefore respond generally from marriage record experience.
Usually there is a number - license number or certificate number - usually in upper left/right in the image of such a record (at least in the recorders book).
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I'm working on getting an answer for you. Just hold on to your batch until that happens, or a moderator comes along who can see the batch. It is a restricted project open to certain groups. I know some people in one of those groups, but, I dropped out of it.
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There does not appear to be a reference number on these images. Mark the reference number for images, 1,3 and 5 blank as well as 2 and 4 as you have already done.
Thank you for your excellent work!
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I was able to open it.
Look at the Field Help example and the What to Index example to see where you'll often find the Reference Number. However, your first, third, and fifth images are unlike either example, They have notations like one of the following. The images haven't been accepted yet, so I'll write what I see. I'm going to remove the images if I can. In images 1 and 5 we see: "Recorded in Marriage Record 21 at Page 172." In image 3 we see "Reg # 21 Page 172."
So, in Images 1, 3, and 5, I would be comfortable indexing as the Reference Number the Page number recorded there -> 172. The page number is one of the valid candidates for Reference Number according to the FH - in fact, it is the first-mentioned candidate.
In images 2 and 4, I don't see any candidate for Reference Number, so I would tab through (it's not a required field) or Ctrl+B that field for those two images/entries.
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The person I asked agrees with John's assessment. Page Number 172 should be indexed on 1,3,5.
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Got it! Thanks to everyone who responded.
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We were told to make the field blank.
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I saw a screen shot of the images. I think they told you wrong information. They were probably going by the older instructions where we indexed the page number of the image, but, there is an instruction to index the page number of the instrument in this project (at least there was in January). This is from a post I made when I was working on the project and had access to instructions:
- For entries on a marriage index, type the appropriate reference number associated with the entry on the index, not the page number of the index itself.
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Thank you for indexing these marriage records. You have been given good information.
The reason we would not put <Blank> in the Reference Number field is because there is no asterisck (*) next to the title of the field and therefore we can Tab past the field. If you do mark it as <Blank>, it would not cause a problem though.
Linda
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