A lesson in persistance...

The ancestor quest has resumed once more - Friday's questions were:

1. Is there a marriage record for my grandparents?
2. Can I find a record of my grandfather’s service in the Canadian army? (He has the distinction of having served in the American army during World War 1 and the Canadian army during World War 11).

I haven't even begun to look into query number two yet but the first question led me on an interesting journey. What I thought would be a relatively easy task turned out to be anything but. I know my grandparent's marriage date and place from the family history - 4 March 1921 in Davenport, Iowa. Now even though this is technically a secondary source, I have a little trouble believing that any woman would ever forget the date and place of her marriage.

Yet search after search of databases, state archives, etc. turned up nothing. I was on the point of giving up when I hit upon the Quad City Memory Project. One feature of this project is an index of some local databases, and as luck would have it, one of those indexes is the Scott County Marriage Certificates: pre 1836-c1925.

Success at last - the database returned a hit for Louis Switzer and Grace Merill (misspelled), married on 4 Mar 1921. Again, I realize that this is not a primary source but taken together with my grandmother's own account of her romance and marriage I'm confident the information is correct. Perhaps I will at some point order the marriage certificate in order to put the final seal of proof on it.

Sources:
Davenport Public Library, Quad City Memory, Local Database Search, online <http://www.qcmemory.org/Default.aspx?PageId=203&nt=203> Switzer data searched 11 February 2008.

TODAY'S QUESTION:
A carry over from Friday...

1. Can I find a record of my grandfather’s service in the Canadian army? (He has the distinction of having served in the American army during World War 1 and the Canadian army during World War 11).