Madison County Gen Soc

Obtaining Historical Madison County Marriage Documents

In 2010 & 2011, volunteers from the Madison County Genealogical Society salvaged, indexed, and filed documents from nearly 6800 early county marriages that had been destined for disposal. 

The marriage document files may contain up to 4 documents:

     1. Affidavit for License (aka License Application, Marriage Application, or Affidavit of Age)

     2. Marriage License (gives permission from the government to marry)

     3. Certificate of Marriage (aka Return of License, Marriage Certificate)

     4. Return of Marriage (aka Health Department document) gives personal details of married parties

         including names, ages, place of birth, name of father, maiden name of mother, etc.

         Note: Return of Marriage document was not used before July 1880.

In some cases a handwritten permission letter was enclosed. Not all documents were preserved and many files are lacking one, two, or three of the four documents.

 

PROCEDURE TO OBTAIN COPIES OF MARRIAGE DOCUMENTS

     1. The Requestor shall send an Email to [email protected] including the name of the bride, groom, and date of marriage.

     2. A member of the MCGS will research the index and send a reply Email containing a list of the documents available for that marriage.

     3. Via US Mail, the Requestor shall submit a list of what documents are to be copied and shall remit a check in the required amount per the fee schedule listed below to: 

Madison County Genealogical Society

P. O. Box 26

Winterset, Iowa 50273

 

FEES - The fee for a single marriage document (one page) will be $15.00. For files with two or more pages the fee will be $20.00. The fee includes a $5.00 document charge by the County Recorder plus a Courthouse copy fee of 50 cents per sheet. The balance will be for processing, packaging, and postage.