Why Is A Marriage Certificate Useful For Someone Doing Family History?

A marriage certificate is probably one of the most useful documents that a family historian can find for their ancestors. It gives the date of the couple's marriage ~ which generally indicates (but not always) the date after which their children were born. It is then possible to search the birth registration indexes for likely siblings to a known child of the couple to build a more complete picture of the family. This helps when trying to find the family in census records.

The marriage certificate also gives the occupation of the groom and the bride and groom's residence at the time of marriage. If the marriage date is just before or just after one of the census dates, this can pinpoint an address with which to search census records, making it easier to locate or or both of the bride and groom.

The marriage certificate also records the names of the fathers of the bride and groom, except in the case of illegitimacy. It records whether either of the fathers were deceased at the time of the marriage ~ useful for providing a starting or end point for searching death registers. Finally, if gives the occupation of the bride and groom's fathers ~ again useful for cross checking information in census records.