Finding Family - Marriage & Divorce Certificates

As I had no idea if my great-grandfather divorced my great-grandmother and “ran off” or if he died, I decided to look up her death certificate as well. I also obtained a copy of her marriage certificate with her second husband. It appeared that she married him in 1924. Her marriage certificate did not state if she was widowed or divorced.

Her death certificate was far more revealing. It gave the usual date of death and the names of her children. It also showed that she had been married twice but that both of her husbands were deceased. I could find no record of a divorce for my great grandparents. In 1924, my great grandfather was about 7 years old and he had two younger siblings. In order for her to marry again, she would have had to have been divorced or widowed.

Marriage and divorce certificates are like any other public record. In fact, unless a divorce is sealed, you can find out petitions for divorce and why the petitioner sought the divorce. Anything that goes through the court is public record. Some people find that members of their family were incarcerated or committed crimes through these records. The problem is that there are so many counties that the records can be contained in and narrowing it down to the right county.

I got a county map of Pennsylvania and went on a hunch that a woman who had small children back in the early 1920s would marry soon after her husband died. While single motherhood is far from unusual today, it was not the case in the 1920s. Especially for a woman who came from another country, most likely had little education and had children. I went on the hunch that my great-grandfather died a year or two before she remarried. I also went on the hunch since the family seemed to stay in the state, that he died in the state.