Source Information

Ancestry.com. Clay County, Missouri, Marriage Index, 1849-1899 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2000.
Original data: Ellsberry, Elizabeth Prather, comp. Marriage Records of Clay County, Missouri, 1852-1900. Three Volumes. Chillicothe, MO, USA: Elizabeth Prather Ellsberry, 1962.

About Clay County, Missouri, Marriage Index, 1849-1899

The information in this database was copied by the Alexander Doniphan Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution in Liberty, Missouri and compiled by Elizabeth Prather Ellsberry. The typescript contains a chronological listing of marriages in Clay Co, Missouri. The bride and groom and the officiating minister or justice of the peace are all listed, as is the marriage date. The residence of the participants is sometimes also listed. In each record, the first date is that of marriage ceremony; the second is when it the marriage was recorded; the names of the contracting parties are given next; the name of the one who performed the ceremony comes last; M.G. stands for minister of the gospel; J.P. stands for justice of the peace.

This was a Clay County project promoted by the Alexander Doniphan Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, in cooperation with the Liberty Advance and Chronicle. The records were published from 19 March 1936 to 19 February 1942 in the Liberty Chronicle and from 18 March 1946 to 7 April 1947 in the Liberty Advance. Each paper may have had duplicate copies, but the volumes are taken from these papers, accordingly, by the compiler. These records were saved and preserved from the papers and loaned to the compiler by Mrs. Hale Houts.

These records in three volumes are taken from the marriage records of pioneers of Clay County, Missouri, 1822-1900. Since the county's marriage records from 1822-1852 have been previously published by Nanon Carr, these volumes only contain the marriage records from 1852 through 1900. Most of the marriage records from 1882-95 are not included in these volumes.

Ms. Ellsberry began genealogical publication in 1958, when she published her own family history, The Warrens and You. In researching her own family, she found that libraries needed additional information from cemetery records, wills, land records, probate records, census records, etc., to help people with their family history. Ellsberry decided that she wanted to help by publishing books that contained solid genealogical data. She taught school for 34 years, but on weekends and summer vacation, she would travel around to different courthouses and cemeteries, recording the information she found. She also corresponded with several researchers and helped them in their research. Ellsberry self-published more than 300 books, and most of them are available for sale.

Most of the compilation of these books took place between 1958 and into the 1970s, so the recorded information should include the cemetery and/or courthouse records of that time period.

Address:

Ms. Elizabeth Prather Ellsberry
P.O. Box 206
Chillicothe, MO 64601