Pennsylvania, County Marriages, 1775-1991

What is in This Collection?

This collection includes civil marriage records created in Pennsylvania counties for the years 1885 to 1950. The records include registers, affidavits and marriage licenses. In some instances, divorce records are recorded with marriages. Some records for the city of Philadelphia and Philadelphia County are included. Most indexed records for the city and county of Philadelphia can be found in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Marriage Indexes, 1885-1951.

Marriages were recorded to legalize marital relationships and to safeguard the interests of the wife and other heirs. The most reliable information is the date and place of the marriage and license date. Other information is dependent upon the reliability of the informant.

On January 12, 1852, the Pennsylvania Legislature enacted its first statewide law requiring the registration of vital records, including marriages. Probably due to lack of compliance, the law was repealed in 1855. On October 1, 1885, a new law went into effect that made it illegal for any “minister of the gospel, justice of the peace, or other officers, or persons authorized by law to solemnize marriages” to marry any couple who did not first obtain a marriage license. Since then, marriage licenses have been recorded without interruption with the Clerk of the Orphans’ Court within each county. Before 1885, marriage records created by ministers, justices of the peace, and larger cities may still be kept by the originator, but the bulk of the marriages recorded in Pennsylvania are in this collection. Counties in the state generally achieved 90 percent compliance by 1915.

Additional records and/or images may be added to this collection in the future.

To Browse This Collection

You can browse through images in this collection using the waypoints on the Collection Browse Page for Pennsylvania, County Marriages, 1885-1950.

What Can These Records Tell Me?

The following information may be found in these records:

Collection Content

Sample Image

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  Marriage Record 1872

Coverage Table

This table shows the number of record in this collection for each county. To search a specific county click the link in the Search column.

Pennsylvania County Marriages Coverage Table

County	Records	URL
Adams	16,131	Adams
Allegheny	805,538	Allegheny
Armstrong	15,876	Armstrong
Beaver	20,630	Beaver
Bedford	14,776	Bedford
Berks	54,571	Berks
Blair	24,336	Blair
Bradford	13,838	Bradford
Bucks	9,662	Bucks
Butler	9,114	Butler
Cambria	32,869	Cambria
Cameron	2,382	Cameron
Carbon	1,363	Carbon
Centre	527	Centre
Chester	48,702	Chester
Clarion	8,080	Clarion
Clearfield	22,208	Clearfield
Clinton	5,530	Clinton
Columbia	5,785	Columbia
Crawford	10,423	Crawford
Cumberland	17,286	Cumberland
Dauphin	84,247	Dauphin
Delaware	47,629	Delaware
Elk	7,102	Elk
Erie	102,272	Erie
Fayette	41,932	Fayette
Forest	6,905	Forest
Franklin	29,227	Franklin
Fulton	5,437	Fulton
Greene	6,596	Greene
Huntingdon	7,296	Huntingdon
Indiana	14,930	Indiana
Jefferson	15,606	Jefferson
Juniata	3,924	Juniata
Lackawanna	64,618	Lackawanna
Lancaster	27,381	Lancaster
Lawrence	15,609	Lawrence
Lebanon	35,919	Lebanon
Lehigh	84,445	Lehigh
Luzerne	209,626	Luzerne
Lycoming	102	Lycoming
McKean	9,049	McKean
Mercer	14,645	Mercer
Mifflin	121	Mifflin
Monroe	207	Monroe
Montgomery	15,794	Montgomery
Montour	3,012	Montour
Northampton	16,366	Northampton
Northumberland	16,089	Northumberland
Perry	10,053	Perry
Philadelphia	1,230	Philadelphia
Pike	116	Pike
Potter	2,128	Potter
Schuylkill	114,956	Schuylkill
Snyder	5,645	Snyder
Somerset	28,965	Somerset
Sullivan	2,068	Sullivan
Susquehanna	77,327	Susquehanna
Tioga	12,732	Tioga
Union	355	Union
Venango	16,960	Venango
Warren	7,915	Warren
Washington	304,607	Washington
Wayne	3,922	Wayne
Westmoreland	66,799	Westmoreland
Wyoming	2,773	Wyoming
York	31,747	York

Digital Folder List

This collection was originally published as a DGS browse collection. These collections do not include any human-readable waypoint data making them difficult to use. A table showing each DGS number and its contents can be found in Pennsylvania, County Marriages Digital Folder Number List. The list can be sorted by DGS number, GS number, county, author, title, and film note.