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Alabama Marriages
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There are several different types of marriage records that were created, marriage records, marriage bonds, marriage licenses, marriage banns, marriage returns, and marriage certificates. Not every county kept each of these record types. Some counties kept one or two or more.
Many of these records were microfilmed and you can view the actual marriage records at a Family History Center near you. Use the links below to find microfilmed marriage records. Make sure that you copy the microfilm numbers correctly or you will end up with the wrong film!
Some records were not filmed and you will have to go to the county court house to view the records. All the marriage records for a county can be found at that court house. You can find the count house address by running a search for it on the internet or many of the county sites have the address of the court house listed.
The Alabama State Department of Archives and History in Montgomery also has copies of many of these records.
It is possible that you might find a marriage bond, license or banns and the wedding was never performed. These records were all made before the wedding happened and sometimes the wedding never actually occurred for some reason or another.
Marriage returns and certificates were made after the wedding was over. Sometimes the county just called them all marriage records and you have to look at them to determine the exactly type of marriage record.
Alabama has common law marriage and you should keep that in mind as you search.
You will notice that most always the marriage records are divided into color and white records.
It should also be noted that the CD that ancestry put out for Alabama marriages only covers white marriages and some counties in Alabama. Why in the world they left out the black marriages when they were making the index is a mystery to me. Why they left out some counties is also a mystery to me. Nevertheless, the microfilm numbers for white and color marriages are listed here on this web site, use the links below.
Also it should be noted that after 1936 coming forward to our time, the marriages are available from the Alabama Department of Public Health.
Click on any of the links below to find the microfilm numbers for the marriage records for that county. Make sure you pull the slider for the page down as the film numbers are at the bottom of each county page. These are copies of the actual records and not transcripts or a book that someone wrote.
Autauga Baker Baldwin Barbour Benton Bibb Blaine Blount Bullock Butler Cahawba Calhoun Chambers Cherokee Chilton Choctaw Clarke Clay Cleburne Coffee Colbert Conecuh Coosa Cotaco Covington Crenshaw Cullman Dale Dallas DeKalb Decatur Elmore Escambia Etowah Fayette Franklin Geneva Greene Hale Hancock Henry Houston Jackson Jefferson Jones Lamar Lauderdale Lawrence Lee Limestone Lowndes Macon Madison Marengo Marion Marshall Mobile Monroe Montgomery Morgan Perry Pickens Pike Randolph Russell Sanford St.Clair Shelby Sumter Talladega Tallapoosa Tuscaloosa Walker Washington Wilcox Winston
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