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Marriage Records


The state required marriage licenses beginning 1 July 1911. The probate judge's office in the county courthouse holds licenses issued before 1950. Both the Bureau of Vital Statistics and the county courthouse have copies of licenses issued after 1 July 1950. You can find addresses and telephone numbers for county courthouses in Elizabeth Petty Bentley, County Courthouse Book (Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., 1990).  We have licenses and/or registers for many counties from 1911-1950.

Federal Records:

Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. Marriage and Divorce Records, Beaufort and Charleston, 1866-1868. 1 ff.

State records:

  • Health and Environmental Control, Department of. City of Aiken. Board of Health. Register of Marriages, 1909-1910. 1v.

  • Health and Environmental Control, Department of. City of Charleston. Board of Health. Marriage Certificates, 1877-1887. 5 mm. No index

  • Secretary of State. Marriage Settlements, 1785-1902. 20v. 8mfm. Indexes, 1785-1887. 2v.

More information on scattered sources for marriages and a general history of record keeping on the subject can be found in Ruth S. Green and Charles H. Lesser, "South Carolina Marriage Records", South Carolina Historical Magazine 79 (April 1978): 155-62. Brent H. Holcomb has abstracted and published marriages listed in the Journal of the Court of Ordinary, 21 December 1764-29 August 1771, and many of the marriages recorded in the Miscellaneous Record series of the Secretary of State. See South Carolina Marriages, 3 vols (1688-1820), (Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1980).

County records:

The Department of Archives and History holds microfilm of marriage licenses and marriage books or registers from many counties for the period 1911 through 1950. These records are listed under Probate Court for the various counties in the Summary Guide on this website

Related marriage records may be found in renunciations of dower and marriage settlements. Records of marriages may be found in county deed of conveyance books and estate record books; records of these marriages, however, are usually unindexed.