marriage help, please

[lazarus]

So, my grandparents, James Herbert Webb and Mildred Merle Webb were married in Crestview, Florida. Thing is, we've got three dates. 21 June is the same, but the years change from 1940 to 1941 to 1942.

Ancestry's marriage records are a mess to look through. Any help would be appreciated.

[dgibby]

1. What's the DOB of the eldest child?

Sometimes that solves the problem, sometimes not so much, but it's a start. Don't know if you've tried this site, but I've found it very helpful in my research.

http://www.usgenweb.org/

Good luck!

[lazarus]

2. 10 Oct 1942

is the date of birth for my aunt.

I checked the Okaloosa County website, but their records don't appear to go back before 1983. :shrug:

usgenweb didn't have anything. Thanks, though.

[csziggy]

3. Looks like they got married in Walton County, not Okaloosa

James Hurbert Webb married Mildred Merle Brooks in Walton County in 1941. Volume 629, certificate 18301.
(ETA - this through Ancestry.com in their Florida Marriage Collection http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?ti=0&r=an&db=FLmarriageindex&F20=18301&F26=&F28=&F30=1941&F24=Walton&rank=0)

To request a copy, go through the Florida Department of Health: http://www.doh.state.fl.us/Planning_eval/Vital_Statistics/index.html It only costs $5 unless you want a fancy commemorative one - those are $30.

[lazarus]

4. how did you find that?

I looked and looked.

Thanks! Although they got a weird spelling for "Herbert". :D

[csziggy]

5. I just put his name into the search thing with no dates and with his living in Florida

Then looked at the results in the Florida Marriage Collection since you had said he was married in Florida. With the Florida Marriage Collection, you get the results for one person, then on the page for the record, the license number is an active link that takes you to a result page with both people on the license.

I've got some great and great-great uncles named Herbert and their names come out some very odd spellings. Hurbert is one of the easier to figure out!

I don't think many of the people transcribing records on Ancestry know how to read old style cursive, they get so much wrong. I've got an ancestor with the first name of Sion and his name has been transcribed as Lion, Sean, Scion, Ion, Tion and Fion. I'll look at the images of the original pages and can't figure out how they get it so wrong.

ETA - Part of my success is that I just have a knack for research, have had all my life. I should have been a reference librarian!

[lazarus]

6. thanks

every tip helps. :hi:

[csziggy]

7. Glad I could find him

I just wish I could find my former BIL's grandfather. We know about where he lived in 1932 when BIL's father was conceived and that is all we know other than his name. There are men with his name, but we can't tell which was the grandfather. Since he and the mother were never married, there are no marriage records.

If only the grandmother had given birth in some state other than Alabama, there might be more records, but Alabama does not provide much information on any of their vital records.

A tip - hope your ancestors died in Kentucky after the Civil War. Their death certificates are on Ancestry, they have the parents name, where the parents were born, and all kinds of great information. Most places barely tell you how old the deceased was!

[lazarus]

8. I've done well on my mother's side

but my father's side is dead ends at the beginning of the 19th century.

Back on my mother's side, Ancestry got something completely wrong. They think my x2 great grandfather died and was buried in Georgia, while I've got a photograph of his tombstone in Alabama. :eyes:

[csziggy]

9. I never count on the Ancestry pedigrees

One World or personal ones. I do sometimes use personal trees to see if others have found sources I missed but more often than not I find really obvious mistakes. Like the one where ancestor B senior was married to wife Z and had son B junior married to wife Z. Yeah, when you have four or five generations with the same given and surnames and none of them use Senior, Junior, Second, Third, or any other way to designate them, it gets confusing, but still.

Since most of my ancestry was handed to me by my grandmother on my father's side (she had a great uncle who did research in the mid-1800s and she was a member of DAR by 1913) and my mother for her side of the family (she had to prove to her MIL that her family was just as good and researched in the 1950s and 60s), most of what I do is fill in gaps and find supporting documentation. Grandmother never bothered with the Census - she knew where everyone had lived and just wanted to prove Revolutionary ancestors. Mom only had access to census indexes and she was thrilled when I took her notebooks with images of the census pages.

By the way, since your family lived in Florida, check out the Florida Census for 1935 and 1945 - some good info there and they can add to your documentation. They can be misleading - grandmother listed Dad as living with them in 1945 but he was on a submarine in the South Pacific! They helped me find the grandmother and father of a different brother in law so that I could get a start on researching his very elusive family.

I'm looking for brother in law families since I am mostly doing the research for my nieces and nephews, in case you are wondering.