When is a Marriage Date not the Date of Marriage?

We often blindly trust the various indexes on the genealogy sites to accurately report the vary basic details such as dates of birth, marriage, or death. Sometimes these indexes display the page from the document from where the index was derived. The "California, County Birth, Marriage, and Death Records, 1849-1980" collection found on Ancestry is one such example.

Here we can see the index record on Ancestry that points to the marriage of Margaret F Walker and Theodore R Thompson taking place in California, USA.

Screen capture of the California, County Birth, Marriage, and Death Records, 1849-1980 collection entry for the marriage of Margaret F Walker and Theodore R Thompson.

We see from the index record that they were married on 17 Mar 1947. What is nice in this case is that we just don't have a transcription from the source document but we can also view an image of the page.

"California, County Birth, Marriage, and Death Records, 1849-1980," database, Ancestry (www.ancestry : accessed 29 Jul 2020), entry for Margaret F Walker and Theodore R Thompson, 17 Mar 1947.

Here is the line that the index came from. You have to view the top of the page to see the year and month.

"California, County Birth, Marriage, and Death Records, 1849-1980," database, Ancestry (www.ancestry : accessed 29 Jul 2020), entry for Betty I Walder and Edward Paioff, 28 Feb 1947 including column headers.

But just a second, looking at the column headers we see that the date is not the marriage date but "When Recorded". A marriage could be recorded by the civil authorities days, week, or even months after the marriage took place. We need to see if we can find a record of the marriage itself.

In the case of this marriage we got lucky in that the "California, County Marriages, 1850-1952" collection on FamilySearch has a record for this marriage.

"California, County Marriages, 1850-1952," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:K8K6-ZNZ : 8 December 2017), Theodore Read Thompson and Margaret Frances Walker, 30 Sep 1939; citing Los Angeles, California, United States, county courthouses, California; FHL microfilm 2,115,857.

Here we see a copy of the marriage license and certificate of marriage for Theodore Read Thompson and Margaret Frances Walker. Notice that the marriage license was issued on 15 Sep 1939 and they were married on 30 Sep 1939 in Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, California, USA.

Where does this date of 17 Mar 1947 come from? If you look at the bottom of the page you will see that it was "...recorded at request of party solemnizing the marriage Mar 17 1947 at 1 Min past 3 p.m." It seems like the minister took nearly a decade to file the completed marriage paperwork with the civil authorities. There is even a marginal note that states "Original, Filed for Record MAR 17 1947  Mame B.Beatty,Recorder,By B Maran, Deputy."

You will also sometimes see the same sort of delay on military records where an event happened days before it was officially recorded in the records back in the office or possibly in a semi-dry command tent away from the front line.

Also, sometimes the assumptions made on the data entry forms used by the transcribers don't actually reflect what is actually stated on the original documents. So they just fill in the information that they have to the best of their ability.

This is yet another case of why we always need to make the effort to locate the various marriage licenses and certificates when we come across a marriage index entry. Of course, this applies to any index but especially be it birth, baptism, marriage, death, and funeral related indexes.