Jackson County Marriage Records

Volunteers at the Rogue Valley Genealogy Society have collected marriage records and wedding announcements for Jackson County for many years. The years available in the library include 1853-1924 and 1942-2006. Marriage records for the years 1853-1924 were gathered from the Jackson County Courthouse. We are currently photographing and indexing the marriage records from the courthouse marriage books. We have completed books 1-10 (1853-1912) thus far and the indexes for these are now or soon will be on our website. We plan to add more of the Marriage Books in the near future, so check back if the information you are seeking is not yet on our website.

If we have copies of the marriage records in our library, you can obtain your own copy of our copy of the actual marriage courthouse record from us for $10. For marriage books not yet copied, we have indexes on the website for abstracts taken from the marriage books in the courthouse. These were created earlier and include the names of the bride and groom and the date of the marriage along with the page reference in the county records where the marriage certificate can be found. If you require more than this, a volunteer will obtain a copy of the actual marriage record from the courthouse for $15.

Please Note: These records, written in “old fashioned” handwriting, are sometimes very difficult to read. A surname can be written two or three ways in a single document. The transcribers have made every effort to determine the most common spelling of a surname and to accurately copy the information in each record. Researchers should be aware that a surname they are looking for might be spelled differently than they think it should be and decide if the marriage listed is their ancestor. In a few cases, a bride’s surname is entirely different in the license application than it is in the marriage certificate. In those cases, we have tried to include both surnames in the index. We assume one name may be the maiden name and the other a married name, but it could also just be a mistake on the recorders part. In either case, a researcher may recognize one name, but not the other. Lastly, when the bride was a Native American various terms were used including “Native American” “Indian” and “Squaw”. Sometimes the Tribe was given, but not always. For consistency, the index uses the term “Indian” as a surname regardless of the term used in the actual document.

For years from 1942 on, our records are from clippings of wedding announcements from local Jackson County newspapers and usually contain more information than the courthouse records. A copy from these records can be obtained from us for $10.

If you find a name of interest to you and would like a copy of our record containing the reference, fill out a request form and mail it to us along with a self-addressed, stamped envelope, and a check for $10 ($15 if we must travel to the courthouse to obtain the record). Be sure to include the referenced name, the volume year or year range, and the page reference(s) for that name. There is a link to the request form at the top of each index.