Finding a marriage license without knowing exact date and location?

Question

My mother and father were married in Illinois or Missouri abt early 40's. How to locate a license for them without knowing exact date and location? Their names are William Harold McCart and Lorena Marie Brown.

Answer 1

Dear Carol,

   Here are two thoughts.   Have your parents ever celebrated an anniversary that might have been written up in the newspaper?  Smaller towns sometimes have columns for celebrating 25 years married, for example.

  Also, do either have a religious affiliation?  Sometimes a church would announce a marriage of a parishioner, even if the event was not held in that church.

  No old friends of your parents still alive who might remember?  Good luck. -NGP

Comments

I've just found an announcement of a 60th wedding anniversary in a local paper. This popped up for me in Google, not a regular newspaper site. From this I found the engagement on a newspaper site but not the wedding because the paper isn't available for the next year.

Creative Googling can often find what you want. Their descendants are on FaceBook which also popped up in a Google search.

Answer 2

Dear Carol,

  If this is your man, he was single (with dependents) on August 11, 1942:

"United States World War II Army Enlistment Records, 1938-1946," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:KMKF-K3S : accessed 22 March 2016), William H Mc Cart, enlisted 11 Aug 1942, Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, United States; citing "Electronic Army Serial Number Merged File, ca. 1938-1946," database, The National Archives: Access to Archival Databases (AAD) (http://aad.archives.gov : National Archives and Records Administration, 2002); NARA NAID 126323, National Archives at College Park, Maryland.

Hope this helps.  -NGP

Answer 3

Have you tried to contact a county Historical Society for where they were married?  There are ways to tap information from USGenweb archives as well.  Good Luck.  Fred Ellis