US—County Marriage Records, 1893–1993
US—County Marriage Records, 1893–1993[MQXL-L46]
So the records to index show two dates. The columns read Book Page Date Men (double- line) Women Book Page Date. What is the marriage date I index? Or do index Women and Men separately? Which the examples show Reference No. Men Women Book Page and then date. The Reference pages show two dates. So I'm confused!
Answers
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I have the same question. Additionally, I have more men on the page than women so I'm not confident that the lines are matched husband to wife.
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This is an index made in order to find marriage records alphabetically, so brides and grooms with surnames that begin with "P" are listed, along with the marriage date and where to find the records. These are not couples, so you would first index the left column of men, indexing the groom's name and marriage date, and then index the right column with the brides' names and marriage dates.
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Thanks for confirming.
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I'm reviewing these and people are indexing them as couples. I don't know how to tag a moderator here, but I think an example or explanation of this type of index needs to be in the project instructions.
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The records group US-County Marriage Records 1893-1993 does not have sufficient guidance for indexing the records, specifically, the samples assume that the male and female names in the columns across from one another are the marriage partners, but that is not necessarily the case. In batch MQXL-LNT that is definitely not the case as the marriage dates for the individuals in the male column are different than those in the female column. Thus the male names and the female names should be in separate entries. In another batch I noted that there were more names in the female column than in the male column. For such batches, the names need to be indexed in separate entries.
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Thanks, erutherford!
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I agree that the project instructions leave a LOT to be explained. Please give us more detailed instructions and more examples to which we can refer.
I'm having trouble figuring out how to index this particular batch today:
US—County Marriage Records, 1893–1993[MQXL-CND].
It's a reverse marriage index, and I understand the concept. The "Female's Name" column (1) is all surnames beginning with 'O'. The "Male's Name" column (2) looks like it contains the names of the grooms of the brides in column (1). However, the pages referenced for the marriage records do not match for the females and males on the same line. There is no document number listed, no geographical location, and no specific dates, only the year. Help!
Any suggestions or insights?
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You will index your batch as the following:
Male's Surname: Farris
Male's Given Name: Frank
Female's Given Name: Tessie M.
Female's Surname: Osborn
Marriage Year: 1916
Every other field will be marked <BLANK>. The reference volumes and pages are part of a different recordkeeping system and are not indexed. You can see that they're not indexed in the How to Index a Marriage Index-Reverse example in the Project Instructions.
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When there are male and female names under the "Christian name" on the same column, do we guess what sex they are or? I would think not, but I have no idea what else to do. Thanks for your help!
https://www.familysearch.org/indexing/batch/9d1094c2-8f96-4c76-a0e3-a5ffe660f5e9
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When there's a list of both male and female sounding names and no sex indicator, we have to use our best judgement. There's nothing else we can do.
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G T Deck, if I'm understanding you right, those vol. and page nos. on the far left are on the previous page. For the page you're indexing, there's only one vol. and page no. given for each couple, so there is no contradiction.
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To erutherford and barbaragailsmith1:
Thank you both for your prompt and enlightening responses. After looking more closely at the light writing on the far left side, I can now see that those vol/page numbers are actually from the previous page, so there is no conflict. I thought they were on the same page as the bride/groom names. Okay. got it now! (Merry Christmas!)
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This type of document has been discussed here several times in the past few days. We're getting a lot of them. By each name is given the book were those marriage records can be found. It's simply to help others find the marriage records of one of the marriage parties with a surname beginning with F. These are not couples. The indexer did it correctly.
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US—County Marriage Records, 1893–1993[MQXL-1CW] How should these cards be indexed?
There's no example. I checked Google only since I've never visited Hawaii and found both Makawao and Hana are cities on Maui so I would suppose Yukinaga is a surname and all other boxes would be blank?
Thanks and Happy New Year😎
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How do I index the small cards? I am so confused as to what information I need to index on these. I assume there might be a location listed at the top, but I am not familiar with the geography. Also, some of the names I can try to discern the sex, but others I cannot tell, so indexing those names is almost impossible for me. It would be so helpful if there was an image to view as an example on how to do these little cards. Can anyone point me in the right direction?
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Hi, I have been indexing these as separate entries because they were obviously not couples. This morning when I started I noticed that a new line of instructions had been added:
Attention
Index each line on the marriage register if it contains a name of a male, female, and a date.
My understanding of that instruction meant that I had indexed many batches that should have been marked as No, no extractable data. I was hoping I was wrong and called the help line and was instructed to mark them as No, no extractable data . I think I will work on other projects for a while.
Happy New Year🙂
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Am I crazy or did they change the project instructions for this project? Until today it said to index them if they had "a name and a date". Now it says if it contains "a name of a male, female, and a date." So I guess we index them only if they have both parties? Except that further down it says, "If a record does not include a name for the principal person, you should still index the record, marking the principal name fields blank and indexing other names, such as names of the spouse". (Which would not be indexing the name of a male and female.) Clarification??
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Every image in the project that I've seen, and I've done a lot, has been an index. The examples in the Proj. Inst. are indexes. So we are to index indexes as long as they have a date as well as names. But Larry's right. It looks like today they changed the instructions to requiring both parties and a date instead of one name and a date. However, further down it contradicts that by saying that if the principal is missing, index it with just the spouse's name. Go figure.
And Larry, I think I'll stop doing these too, unless they clarify the written instructions. Too many of the batches would be NED.
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Not sure myself. I also checked Google and these index cards seem to be from Hawaii in the early 1900's. No gender is indicated. Not sure I am doing them correctly, but I have used the name of the town in the "city" field, left the state and county fields "blank" and chosen the person's gender from the first name, if there is one. In most cases, there seems to be a surname, given name. Many of the names are Hawaiian or Asian. If there is a name with no comma after it, I have input the name as a given name and left the surname blank.
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The Hawaiian records should be NNED, if you're going by the pop-up rule that it must contain a male, female and a date, but the PI says to index it if there's no name for the principal, which should make them indexable. @Maile L, any kind of clarification? This project is a mess.
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@Maile L , I'm going with @LarryClark43 and @barbaragailsmith1 and will stop doing these batches even for review because all these cards that are up for review have been done incorrectly and reviewers don't have anything. I've heard the comment that indexing just points to the information so it doesn't matter whether the indexing is accurate or not --- I hope that's not the case --- in all my years of indexing its always been critical that I try to give my best work and I think we all feel the same.
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Looks like they took out the contradictory instruction about indexing the the spouse's name if the principle's name is missing. It's all good now.
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I have merged a whole bunch of questions about the US Marriage project into one place. Please review the Project Instructions to see what changes have been made. Everything I keep hearing is that there must be a male and a female and a date. Others will be marked NED and should be indexed at a later date.
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They took out the instruction saying to index it using the spouse's name if the principle isn't given. So I think it's all good now. I actually posted a separate "question" telling this, thinking people would see it, but I don't see my post anymore.
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