A Marriage Certificate from 1924 Leads to a Birth Record from 1864

A while back, I cre­at­ed a Vital Records Check­list to cat­a­log all the obvi­ous records I had, and the ones I need­ed, to flesh out the most rudi­men­ta­ry data, the births, mar­riages, and deaths of my ances­tors.

This led to my send­ing out a request to the Clerk of the Val­ley Coun­ty, Nebras­ka Court (http://www.co.valley.ne.us/clerk.html) has sent my the mar­riage cer­tifi­cate for my grand­par­ents, Helen Kjer­s­tine JOHNSON and Ernest Melvin HILL.

The doc­u­ment con­firms the rela­tion­ship of Ernest Melvin HILL with Mary Jane SCOTT (his moth­er) and Alvin Leslie HILL (his father), and out­side of cen­sus records, is the ear­li­est doc­u­ment I have found that does this. (My grand­fa­ther was born in 1895, which was pri­or to birth reg­is­tra­tion in Nebras­ka, and he died in 1933, before Social Secu­ri­ty Reg­is­tra­tion required folks to get delayed birth cer­tifi­cates.

Wit­ness­es at the wed­ding includ­ed Helen’s mater­nal uncle, “W. B. Gregg” (William Blake­way GREGG) and Ernest’s broth­er Alfred L. HILL.

It’s curi­ous to me if there was a rea­son that none of the three liv­ing par­ents of the cou­ple (Nels JOHNSON, father of Helen, and Mary Jane and Alvin) were list­ed as wit­ness­es. Of course, the form only asks for two wit­ness­es. And these were an old­er cou­ple (Helen was 30 and Ernest 29) at their first mar­riage, but one won­ders.

I believe I have a news­pa­per account of the mar­riage. I would like to know for sure whether the par­ents attend­ed. I assume they did, as they all lived near­by, but, I am not sure at this point.

The doc­u­ment pro­vides the fol­low­ing dates:

• 12 Novem­ber 1924 — Appli­ca­tion for Mar­riage License
• 22 Novem­ber 1924 — Mar­riage License
• 24 Novem­ber 1924 — Mar­riage Cer­tifi­cate

This appears on a sin­gle page in what is no doubt a mar­riage book. How­ev­er, the Clerk did not clar­i­fy the actu­al vol­ume. There is a nota­tion at the top, “55” and the page is pre-print­ed with “75,” so per­haps this is:

Mar­riage Record (Appli­ca­tion for Mar­riage License; Mar­riage License; Mar­riage Cer­tifi­cate) of Ernest Melvin Hill and Helen Kjer­s­tine John­son, 24 Novem­ber 1924; Val­ley Coun­ty Clerk, Ord, Nebras­ka; Mar­riage Book 55:75.

(I may have to call them, or research fur­ther. Until then, I will add a ques­tion mark at the book num­ber.)

Mean­while, take anoth­er look at my Vital Records Check­list, I won­dered if I could find any­thing about the birth of Alvin Leslie HILL. Less than five min­utes lat­er, I had the kind of instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion on Ances­try that pep­pers their tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials:

“Alvin Leslie, son of Edward John Hill of Shef­ford and Alice Welch, his wife, was born the twen­ty fourth day of July one thou­sand eight hun­dred and six­ty four and was bap­tised on the thir­ty first day of Decem­ber by me. David Lind­say.”

Entry for Alvin Leslie Hill, 1864; Québec Vital and Church Records (Drouin Col­lec­tion), 1621–1967 [data­base on-line]. Ancestry.com: Pro­vo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Oper­a­tions Inc, 2008.Original data: Gabriel Drouin, comp. Drouin Col­lec­tion. Mon­tre­al, Québec, Cana­da: Insti­tut Généalogique Drouin.

A two-fer! I now have a slight major­i­ty of the vital records (18 of 33) that I list­ed from my father, grand­par­ents, and great grand­par­ents.