Civil Marriage Protocols for County Schluechtern Villages 1718-1874
In the 18th and 19th centuries, when a couple in this county decided to get married, they had to report to a judicial office (Justizamt) to register their intent and to get government approval before they could get married by their church official, whether Lutheran, Reformed, Catholic or Jewish. After approval, the marriage usually took place within 2 to 4 weeks in the church of either the bride or groom, but it could have been later if there was a complicated situation.
The original records of these protocols are in the Hessisches Staatsarchiv in Marburg, Germany. The Archiv allowed the microfilming of these records, which are viewable at familysearch.org
I have extracted the genealogically valuable information from about 15,000 marriage protocols from these civil records in the county of Schluechtern, Germany, between 1718 to 1873, from the microfilmed records of the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah. Some of the protocols also include marriage contracts. You can view these microfilms yourself. If you can read the old German handwriting, you will be pleased at the interesting information you can get about your ancestors. If you can't , it can be a very frustrating experience to have the information at hand but not be able to decipher it.
In my extraction, I recorded : Dates of the registrations Names of the brides and grooms Ages or birth dates Parents' names Villages of residence Occupation and religion of the couple.
I have listed these in tables in Microsoft Word. They are indexed chronologically as they appeared on the microfilms. Eventually, this index may appear for each registration office in the familysearch.org catalog But for now, you can contact me and I will do a lookup for you.
All the extractions from the villages listed below are included .
There were 20 judicial offices.
The villagers in the following places registered their marriage intentions at Schwarzenfels from 1723 to 1873.
The Brandenstein judicial office included the following villages from 1770 to 1832: Elm Gundhelm Hutten Oberkalbach
The Altengronau judicial office was used from 1718 to 1770 by the villagers from:
Altengronau Elm Gundhelm Hutten Jossa Mittelsinn Oberkalbach Obersinn
Other places with indexes are:
Ahlersbach 1718-1797 Altengronau: includes Altengronau and Jossa 1770-1799. Bellings 1701-1816; 1797-1821 Breitenbach 1798-1822 Hohenzell 1721-1795; 1818-1821 Klosterhoefe: includes Trasenberg, Klosterhoefe, Roehrigs 1702-1817 Kressenbach 1628-1824 but many years missing before 1749 Marjoss 1713-1797. Niederzell 1718 - 1821 ( no entries for 1719 to 1738); 1831-1832 Ramholz: includes Hinkelhof, Ramholz and Vollmerz from 1782 to 1848 Reinhards 1803-1821 Sannerz 1798-1832 Schluechtern Steinau Wallroth 1687-1822
Some of these places are now in the county of Fulda.