The Knowles Collection: February 2016

10 February 2016

New marriage records at FamilySearch

Today there has been a very nice collection of marriage records added to the FamilySearch web site. The records are of six states of the United States as well as the records from Durham, England. Included are the records of a few states with large Jewish communities, New York, Louisiana and Missouri. Not all of the states have records that are name search able as of today, however, almost 5.8 million records are search able. The chart below shows those locations and numbers of records. In addition, last week over 3.5 million marriage records were added from Indiana.

The range of years included is different for each collection and because of that some records give better information than others. For example the top record below is a record form the New York collection for a marriage from 1914. These records were gathered from the various counties who had started to require these records.

The record below is from the collection for Louisiana from 1870. The original records are in the possession of the Louisiana State Archives.

Most of the records from the United States are from the time frame that will also include the majority of census records, which makes these records vital to verifying family connections. The collections are not complete and will continue to be added to as more records are made available.

Even with being incomplete, these are a wonderful resource for family historians and as with all other FamilySearch collections they are available for no charge at www.familysearch.org.

Growth and Change

In the 12 years since the Knowles Collection was first published, the numbers have climbed from 7,500 to over 1,4000,000. So many of our ancestors left their native lands for new homes. Because of that movement the collection will now be in 6 different databases. All of them will be under the Knowles Collection umbrella. They are Jews of The British Isles; Jews of the North America; Jews of Europe; Jews of South America and the Caribbean; and Jews of Africa and the Orient and the newest one, Jews of the Southern Pacific.. This is a great indication of how universal our families are, and of how much still needs to be done.