Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Wedding Wednesday....Matt and Mary Bell

Marriage certificate of Matt and Mary Bell, 1893
May I just say that the changes to Family Search are awesome?
I was never really a fan of that site and everyone said it was the go to site for genealogy. It was just never user friendly enough for me. But now things are different and I'm in serious like with Family Search. I especially like the scanned documents that are being shared on the site. 


This marriage certificate is one that I found just minutes ago. I'd been to the public library today and happened to find a book in the research room called At the foot of the Beartooth Mountains: A history of the Finnish community of Red Lodge, Montana -  (1998) by Leona Lampi. I remembered that my great great grandpa, Matt Bell, had lived there and my great grandma, Elina Bell was born there. I scanned the index and found Matt's name and a couple of photos of his boys. I know little about this branch of the family tree, so I placed a hold on the book through the interlibrary loan program and jotted a down a few notes from the copy in the research room. I came home and logged onto Family search to see what I could find and lo and behold the marriage certificate popped right up. It's a boon too, with names of both the bride's and groom's parents' and the towns they came from in Finland. All new info to me. Also, the marriage month and date were information I didn't have before. Now I can't wait for the copy of the book to come so I can scour the pages for more information. Another productive day of sleuthing.

3 comments:

  1. Congratulations on the find! As an indexer/arbitrator with FamilySearch, I get to see some of the projects that are in the pipe. There are lots of marriage records being indexed right now. Makes me happy!

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  2. I want to thank you and everyone who takes part in the indexing project. Don't think that it goes unappreciated. You all are awesome.

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  3. Oh, what a find - or finds! Congratulations.

    I came to tell you that I've awarded you the Ancestor Approved Award. You do a really nice job with your blog. You can learn more about the award and get the image at this post on my blog: http://nancysfamilyhistoryblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/award-and-favorites.html.

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