Follow Friday - Wyandotte County Historical Museum

 Records in Unusual Places

Wyandotte County Historical Museum, Bonner Springs, KS

It’s not often that a county museum holds the original marriage license and marriage affidavits.  But, the Wyandotte County Historical Museum  is the repository of the Kansas City, Kansas marriage records as well as other towns within Wyandotte County.

You can probably imagine my surprise when I received a negative response from the County Court House, the Kansas Historical Society in Topeka, and the Kansas Room of the Main Library in my attempt to locate these original records.  My last resort was to check the Trowbridge Research Library at the Wyandotte County Historical Museum, which is actually located in Bonner Springs, Ks.

Being familiar with local repositories is always a plus.  And having researched at the Trowbridge Research Library before, reminded me that they had cemetery records and newspapers from the 1860s.  I’ve also referenced their index of wills, and tax rolls which span from 1869-1905.  But, what about marriage records?  Could there be a chance that these records were in the small cramped research space of the Museum?

Trowbridge Research Library

Of course I started the search with the county courthouse.  And, the Wyandotte County Courthouse did have well preserved ledgers of marriage licenses.  As most marriage records they provided indexed names and dates, so I copied the pertinent information. But they did not house the original affidavits, with the intimate details.  These, as I realized after 4 phone calls to local repositories, were at the Wyandotte County Historical Museum, about 20 minutes away.

With white gloves donned, I was able to search by year and month (not indexed or alphabetized) from before the 1860s.  These records were surprisingly well preserved.  For the most part, the full affidavit followed the relevant marriage license, which made searching easy. 

Kathleen Brandt

stradercom@aol.com