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Hamilton County Genealogical Society Record Index - Data Base |
Restored Hamilton County, Ohio Marriages 1870-1884
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Title: Restored Hamilton County Marriages 1870-1884 Indexed
by Jeffrey G. Herbert, Hamilton County Chapter, Ohio Genealogical Society,
Cincinnati, Ohio 1994. Introduction from published book: Important
Note to Researchers On
24, March 1884 a great tragedy struck Cincinnati. A riot started that evening
in the downtown area and resulted in the burning of the Hamilton County
Courthouse. This fire destroyed many of the records that had been kept
previously in the courthouse, one of which was marriage license applications
and returns. Apparently many of the 'older' records (before 1860) were stored
in another part of the courthouse and did not sustain as extensive damage as
those from the period 1860 until March 1884. The
reconstructed licenses from this period at the courthouse today comprise less
than 5% of the total licenses applied for during that time period. This index
is an attempt to reconstruct as much of that data as possible for the time
period from January 1870 until December 1884. During this period,
approximately 41,000 marriages occurred in the Cincinnati/Hamilton County
area. This index contains over 36,800 marriages or close to 90% of the total
number. The
primary base of information for this index is from the Cincinnati Freie
Presse, which was a newspaper published in German from 1874 until 1963 for
German speaking immigrants of Cincinnati. The Cincinnati Freie Presse,
started publishing marriage license applications in November of 1874 and
continued publishing this information for many years, however, this index
ends in December 1884. Additional sources of information are the Cincinnati
Daily Times, which published some license applications starting in August
1873, and the Cincinnati Volksfreund which was used to bridge some missing
data in the Cincinnati Freie Presse in the 1880's. For all of these
newspapers the date when the notice appeared is under the 'Date' column, and
page number where the license appears is in the 'Code' column. In the
Cincinnati Freie Presse and Cincinnati Volksfreund, these marriage license
notices appear under the heading 'Ehe-Erlaubnißscheine' or
'Heirats-Erlaubnißscheine', which mean 'marriage permit license' or 'wedding
permit license'. These
newspaper publications provide the majority of the reconstructed information,
however, there are gaps where the reporter apparently didn't pick up the list
for a day or the courthouse employees didn't prepare a list for a particular
day. Also, as can be common even today, when a list of names appear in the
newspaper, there can be many misspellings of names or typographic errors
which result in an incorrect spelling of a name. To try to compensate for
these errors, and also to help the researcher locate additional sources of
information, church records were checked, when available and permitted, and
these are so indicated in the code column. In the case where the code
indicates a church, this is the actual date when the marriage occurred. When
the code indicates a newspaper date, this is the date when the marriage
license application appeared in the paper. In most cases, the marriage
occurred within a day or two after the license was received. The
issues of Cincinnati Freie Presse, Cincinnati Daily Times and Cincinnati
Volksfreund are located in the History Department of the Public Library of
Cincinnati and Hamilton County located at 8th and Vine Street. Many of the
church records have been microfilmed and are available through any LDS
(Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) library. These film numbers are
listed on the following pages. Copies of the records from Catholic churches
in Hamilton County are located at the Archives of the Archdiocese of
Cincinnati. There
may be a great deal of spelling variations in the way a first or last name
may be spelled. This might be due to the 'americanization' of a name after
the immigrant lived here for a few years. Also most of the church names where
not written in English during this time. All of the German protestant
churches kept their records in German and used the old German script style of
handwriting, which makes interpretation very difficult. Almost all of the
Catholic churches kept their records in Latin. In addition, some common
spelling variations to watch for, are the frequent interchangeability of the
letters 'C' and 'K' (e.g. Carl/Karl) The
unique German letters and their usual English equivalents are listed below as
an aid to the reader. Any unique German letter that was recorded, would be
translated as found below. '
ä ' translated into English as 'ae' '
ö ' translated into English as 'oe' '
ü ' translated into English as 'ue' '
ß ' translated into English as 'sz' or 'ss' Some
examples are as follows: (Schäfer = Schaefer), (Schröder = Schroeder) ,
(Müller = Mueller) , (Bußmann = Bussmann) . Letters with an umlaut are sorted
alphabetically* as if they came after the letter 'Z' (i.e. ...
u,v,w,x,y,z,ä,ö,ü,ß). *
Note: in the online index, the German letters are sorted with the English. |