Everton Publishers’ Genealogy Blog reports that Genealogical Forum of Oregon has posted Multnomah County, Oregon, Marriage Indexes Online from 1855 to 1904. Multnomah County encompasses the largest city in Oregon, Portland, as well as surrounding communities and towns.
If you find your ancestor online, it will cost USD$5.00 for a copy of the original record.
One of my mystery ancestors is Louella Brunner Parrett. We know that at sometime she married Lewis Parrett in Portland. She may have been also married to a Pinder, West, and others. She also went by Lula and Lulu. I thought I’d check out these new online marriage records for Portland and Multnomah County.
The records are grouped by year. On each grouped year’s first page, you will find a list of names. The listing is organized alphabetically beginning with the first name on the list. Not very intuitive as it probably should be from the first to the last name on each page, but it works. I had to do some debating as “Parrett” is between Northrup and Patterson on one list, not Patterson and Porter. Time to practice my alphabet. 😉
Each marriage has two parties, therefore, each marriage is listed twice in the index under the husband and wife.
In the index from marriages from 1900 through October 1904, I found some Parretts, but not Lewis nor Louella. They could be related, but I have no starting information on Lewis Parrett yet, so these are shots in the dark.
To search through the records, I recommend you use Ctrl+F in your web browser and type in the first few letters of the name to search down the list to the name you are looking for. Beats scrolling down the long list of names.
I haven’t found Louella or Lewis Parrett yet in the list, but I’ll keep looking. They might have been officially married after 1904, or never officially married. All we have is her death certificate listing her married name as Parrett as of 1930. She remains a mystery.
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