Ontario, 1858-1869 Marriage Index

Now you can uncover information on nearly 158,000 individuals married between 1858 and July, 1869 in Ontario, Canada — before Province-wide registration of marriages began.

You can access County Marriage Registers for Ontario on data set, providing links between two people and families. Most records give names for both sets of parents, providing further genealogical value.

Surviving microfilmed records in each county throughout the Province are collected together, and details merged into one Province-wide index for the first time. This saves you time and effort — now you can search for your ancestors' marriages in one master index, instead of looking through microfilms of 40 county marriage registers or indexes one-by-one.

What you'll find on this data set:

• Name, age, residence, and birth place of each spouse
• Names of parents
• Marriage location and date
• County where the marriage was recorded
• Microfilm Roll Number

Microfilm roll numbers refer to microfilm located at the LDS Family History Library in Salt Lake City site. If you would like to view the original microfilm records, you can do so at the Family History Library or arrange to have copies loaned to a local Family History Center for a small fee.

Civil registration of marriages Province-wide began in 1869. Prior to that time, ministers, priests, and other persons qualified to perform marriages submitted copies of their documentation to county courthouses. The vast majority of these marriage documents included details about each spouse, including place of residence and birthplace. Additionally, each spouse had to supply names of their parents. In many cases the maiden name is supplied for the mother.

Many of these spouses were born in various European countries or in the United States. Thus, this information could be valuable for both Canadians and Americans, as well as Europeans wishing to trace a family member who got married in Ontario before moving on to settle in other parts of Canada or America.

More About this Data Set

Generally, you'll find the following information about an individual included in this data:

Name — In some records, you will find three question marks in place of the given name or surname. This indicates that the name was not listed on the original record. You may also find question marks in place of missing letters.

A question mark after a name indicates that the name spelling was unclear. You may also occasionally find the same record listed in the index under two different name spellings. Please note that not all unusual and uncertain names were noted by question marks, so always be sure to check under various spellings if you are having trouble locating a name.

Spouse — This field lists the name of the individual's spouse. Please note that all records appear in the index twice, once under the husband's name and once under the wife's name. Since both names are indexed, you can search for and locate an ancestor's marriage even if you only know one of the spouse's names.

Marriage Date — The date the marriage was performed. Please note, due to limitations of the data entry process used to create this data set, marriage dates reflected on the original microfilm by year only were entered as January 1 of that year. For example, "1862" will be reflected as "1/1/1862." It is estimated that 5-10% of the January 1 dates for 1858-1869 will be affected by this issue.

County — This is the county in which the marriage was recorded. In most cases, this is also the county in which the marriage took place.

Additional Information — You may also find the following additional information about your ancestor in this record:

• Individual's age
• Individual's birth place
• Individual's residence
• Name of individual's father and/or mother
• Name of spouse
• Spouse's age
• Spouse's birth place
• Spouse's residence
• Name of spouse's father and/or mother