US—County Marriage Records, 1893–1993 [MQXL-5QV]

LesterChristieAnn1

• The page I downloaded is obviously the right half of a marriage index. The page before mine has the left side of the same marriage record. I was able to find the marriage record for the husband and wife on Ancestry which confirmed my suspicious that I was only seeing part of the record. When I read the basic guidelines to Indexing it says:
• 
  
• If the first record on an image begins on a previous image, don't index it. The record will be indexed as part of the previous batch. Start indexing at the first complete record. 
• If the last record on an image continues to the next image, index the entire record, including what continues to the next image.
• To see the next image while continuing to index information for the current image, do the following:

1. In the top corner of the image window, in the vertical toolbar, click the Reference Images 

 icon.

2. Below the screen on the right, click a thumbnail next to the image you are currently indexing.

3. Index the record while viewing both images at the same time.

4. To exit split screen mode, in the vertical toolbar, click the Reference Images 

 icon.

Are we to use this rule when indexing these marriage indexes or do we just simply index half of a record with very little information, especially when indexing the right half of a record.

erutherford

You will index it as-is. There will be a lot of registers that only list one party. I've already done several. We do not use outside sources, including Ancestry and Google. Reference Images are there for reference only. The left side will be indexed as a separate batch. The batch will be indexed as follows:

Male GN: Chas A.

Male SN: Van Houten

Male Age: 28

Everything else will be marked <BLANK>.

LesterChristieAnn1

I only used the outside source to see if I was correct in assuming I was only seeing half of a page. I hope there will be a way to link it to the other half of the page after it is indexed otherwise the right sides of the pages will be quite useless. There are no dates, volumes, page numbers or any other relevant information on that side of the page. At least the record with the bride's name will have some searchable information for anyone looking for the marriage record. Thanks for answering and Merry Christmas.

LesterChristieAnn1

Mr. Rutherford,

Wouldn't I also include the county and state since it is on the top of the page as per the instructions?

erutherford

There doesn't need to be pages, dates, volumes, etc. If information is not on the document, you will mark it <BLANK>. As long as there's a name, like your batch, you will index it.

barbaragailsmith1

The instructions say to only index a line that has a name AND a date. However, on this type, the marriage spans two pages and you would use the reference images to get the other information. Since the specific project instructions don't address this, we would fall back on the general indexing guidelines. https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/how-do-i-index-records-that-span-two-images-or-view-additional-images

Since your batch is the second page of the records, the person indexing the previous image should have used your image (his reference image) to complete the records. Your's should be No Ext. Data.