George and Helen

Part of my family lived in Ellicott City from the middle to late 1800s. They were Catholic so I searched the records of St. Paul's Roman Catholic Church. Along the way I stumbled across the first marriage record of George Ruth in 1914. I made a copy. The link to the image is at the end of this posting. There are two images for the marriage record. One is from the whole page showing the people married before and after George. The other is a blowup of just his record. The images are saved in an Adobe PDF format. You will need the Adobe plug-in for your WEB browser or you can download the PDF file for viewing off-line.

I did not have to go to St. Paul's to search their records. The Baltimore Catholic Archdiocese had most of their church records microfilmed by the Maryland Archives. They are available for viewing at the Maryland Hall of Records in Annapolis. The Church records are part of Special Collections. The St. Paul special collection is called SC 2583 and is made up of three microfilms covering 1838 - 1981. Click HERE to see what each film covers. The film covering George is M 2908 and it is restricted because it has Baptisms up until 1981. The film must be viewed at the Archives.

Documenting our source is most important. The citation should have enough information that would allow other researchers to verify the facts. Our citation could read as: Maryland State Archives Special Collections (Church Records Collection) St. Paul's of Ellicott City, Howard County, Maryland, 1914, MSA SC 2583, M 2908, Marriage record page 178.

Catholic Church records are in Latin. It basically reads: Day 17 October, 1914, I, the undersigned joined in matrimony George Ruth from the place of Baltimore whose father is George Ruth AND Helen Woodford from the place of Galveston, Texas whose father is Charles (or Carl) Woodford. Witnesses: Mary Dolan and Margaret Powers -- T. S. Dolan.

I notice that Mary Dolan was a regular witness indicating that she was used when a witness could not be found. At this time period Howard County was used for fast weddings because it did not have a waiting period. More about that in the next posting



NEXT POSTING: Howard County Marriage License of George and Helen

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