Marriage Index Notes
The original version of this site's marriage index was begun in the mid-1980s to assist me in my family research. At that time church records were only available on microfilm at a Family History Center. I chose to index all the marriages in a volume regardless of whether I was related to the bride or groom. That orignal index showed only the names of the brides and grooms and their date of marriage. Now, most of the parishes have parent names (if part of the record) included as well. The index may also include the place the person was from-- a valuable resource for those trying to make the connection between the US and Poland. If images are available online, the LDS image number may also be given to speed up your lookup.
Polish parishes in Chicago were indexed first and as images of Polish parishes beyond Chicago became available online, they were also added. The original 'bare bones' index was essentially redone to correct some inevitable errors. The index is better now because greater experience reading the records helped make for a more accurate index the second time around.
As an historical note with respect to St. Stanislaus Kostka Church in Chicago, the original data collection methodology was different the first time around. St. Stanislaus was at one time the largest Polish parish outside of Poland. With limited time and resources, I used a shortcut to speed things along. Each St. Stanislaus marriage register has a full name index entry for each bride and groom. Furthermore, the registers were set up for only one marriage per page. This meant that I could copy names and page numbers from the register index very quickly for two reasons. The first reason is that the register index either had better penmanship or was typed. The second reason is that there was less time wasted cranking the microfilm reader going from image to image.
After all the names were collected, I wrote a computer program to pair up the bride and groom names that were on each page of the register. Manually, the paired brides and grooms were separated into one column for grooms and one for brides. In general, this system worked very well-- and was fast. It's also the reason why much of my old St. Stanislaus Kostka index did not show the actual marriage date. Reading and creating an index from an index this way can result in inevitable errors. Going back and reading the original record later on enabled me to fix those errors, add dates, parents and 'home towns' (if provided).