My mother was born in Canon City, Colorado in 1911. The Feller family had moved to the area from Missouri in the 1880s and were well settled in by my mother’s birth. Mother was the daughter of Hazel Feller and Neal Cornett. However, when mom was about 5 years old, her parents separated (I never have found a divorce), and she and her little brother (Merle) were adopted by her Great-Uncle and Aunt, Fred and Rosa Feller. So mom officially became a Feller.
I noted a few days ago that the Colorado Statewide Marriage Index 1900-1939 was updated early in June, so thought it was about time I did a review of the site. The Marriage Index is actually a card index created by the Division of Vital Statistics, Department of Health in Colorado. The index is arranged alphabetically by groom’s name providing county, names of husband and wife, age, race, date and place of marriage, and certificate number. It should be noted that some cards are out of order, but if you’re using the FamilySearch Index instead of just browsing, this will not be an issue. There are 452,357 records and 907,007 images as of 7 June 2013, when the update was made.
For the purposes of this review, I chose to make a search for all those with the Feller surname for the entire time period of 1900 to 1939. I got 115 results, with the first 27 actually being for the surname, Feller. Of the 27, nine of them are my family, with a couple other possibilities. To see the page itself, click on the illustration below.
Clicking on the link for Virginia Feller, I got the following index image (again, click on the image for to go to the site):
The above screen led me directly to an image of the original index card for the marriage of Virginia Feller to Maynard Claussen. Maynard was mom’s first husband, who died young of Hodgkin’s disease. By clicking on “View Image,” I got the following:
This is a great resource. Check it out for yourself.
There is also a Colorado, County Marriages, 1864-1995 Database at FamilySearch, which contains the imaged records of county marriages from Clear Creek, Fremont, Kit Carson, Logan, Moffat, Phillips, Saguache, Sedgwick, Washington, and Yuma counties. There were 49,690 images as of 15 June 2012, when the data was posted.
For those interested in Colorado research, I might also note that Dollarhide just completed a new Colorado Name Lists 1858-1998 volume, which gives lists census & census substitutes for the state. The are hundreds of references in the book. However, just links alone to online resources totals 351! Click on the link for more information. Click here to read Dollarhide’s new blog article, What are Name Lists?
Finally – if you have an interest in what Marriage Record Databases may be found at FamilySearch, see GenealogyBlog’s own “United States Marriage Documents & Indexes Found at FamilySearch.org.” There you will find an updated listing of 148 databases of marriage records, by state, with descriptive information and links.
