British Columbia Marriage Registrations, 1859-1932; 1937

The amazing amount of marriage records now available online continues to grow. This collection, the British Columbia Marriage Registrations, 1859-1932, 1937, contains over 141,000 images. The original records are from the Division of Vital Statistics, however they are now available for viewing at www.familysearch.org.

The actual records provide some wonderful information on those who were married in British Columbia. Not only has this collection been made available in transcription form but the original documents are also included. I began my search by just performing a simple search of the surname Cohen, which returned 569 hits.
Searching the list I was able to locate the record I was looking for, the 1911 marriage of Abraham Charles Cohen to Laura Bertha Weaver. The transcription provided me with most of the information. It included the names, ages and birthplaces of the bride and groom as well as the names of both sets of parents, including the mothers maiden names. That transcription is show below.

 The transcription, also states that the record is a marriage license for the marriage which took place on 4 June 1911 in Vancouver, British Columbia. Additionally it also provides us with the number of the Family History Library film that was used to transcribe the record (1983703). When I then followed up by looking at the original record (see below), I was able to gather a little more information, such as the names and addresses of the witnesses, the fact that both bride and groom were Jewish and the name of the Rabbi who performed the marriage, Rabbi Elias Friedlander.

 This collection should be of great help to all of those who had family married in British Columbia. The collection should continue to grow as more records become available.

 
 

Records of British Columbia, Canada on Familysearch.org

It has been discussed many times of the amazing databases becoming available at www.familysearch.org, that make it easier for researchers to find records of our Jewish ancestors in Non-Jewish records. A few more of those databases are now available free of charge for those wishing to locate their families in British Columbia, Canada.
The databases are easy to find and very user friendly when it comes to searching the records. On the website is located the map of the world next to the links for browsing the databases of different parts of the world.
By clicking on the link for USA, Canada and Mexico, a listing of all the databases for those areas will be listed. Included in that list are three databases for British Columbia, Canada.

The two larger databases, Death Registration 1872-1986 and Marriage Registrations 1859- 1932 have a good number of records of the Jews of British Columbia. The databases are search able and while the images are not included the information provided is very good. The records below show some of the information for each record.















The records shown here, a marriage on the left and a death on the right, also provide the microfilm numbers of the original films in the collection of the Family History Library and also the film numbers from the British Columbia Archives.

Using those film numbers researchers should be able to find the original certificate if they so desire. Happy Canada Day Everyone