Judy: I think getting a look at this marriage document is going to be a problem. "Not Filmed" What this means, is for some reason the registration form was not microfilmed, and is therefore unavailable to the general public. The file only exists in the hands of the BC Vital Statistics Agency. And as you know, they charge a high price to do lookups. So your only hope, other than paying the $50 to BC Vital Statistics, is to try for a search of church records in the city where the marriage took place. If you already know the religion of the bride or the groom, this may help, but I have often seen marriage records that show the religion of the officiating clergyman is NOT the same as either the bride or the groom. There would be a lot of churches in the Vancouver area, even at that early date. Searching for the church record is likely to be a long, involved process. You could begin by trying to find out the address of the couple, or the address of the bride's parents prior to the wedding date. The BC City Directories of the late 1890's, Vancouver section, might show the families listed as living in Vancouver, and fortunately, the surnames are not very common, so you can probably find out who was the right person, and the directory would give the exact street address. Then you'd find out what neighbourhood that street was in, and try to find out what churches existed in that neighbourhood, though you can't be sure they got married in that neighbourhood. And it's possible one or both of them lived in a different city, but came to Vancouver for the ceremony, so it's not even a sure thing that you will find the families' names in the directories. Tracking down the records of the church would take a bit of work too. Many churches no longer exist, and in any case, most churches have sent their records to some central archives for their denomination. Several Protestant denominations have records at the University of British Columbia, Dept of Theology; Catholic records are sent to the Diocesan Archives for their area, as are Anglican records. All in all, your best bet may be to pay the $50 to Vital Statistics, depending on how important it is to your overall research, to have this document. Possibly in the future, this record may appear in newly-released microfilms. I understand that one of the reasons for documents not being filmed, is that they are part of a group of later records, and they will appear at the date when those later records become (in the case of marriage records) 75 years old, and releasable to the public. Claudia Claudia Cole Independent Research Agent 304 - 1960 Lee Avenue Victoria BC V8R 4W8 Canada -----Original Message----- From: elista [mailto:elista@telusplanet.net] Sent: March 18, 2002 7:51 AM To: CAN-BRITISH-COLUMBIA-L@rootsweb.com Subject: [CAN-BC] Help with non-mico-filmed marriage - STRAUBE/KOLONOSKY Hi List, I'm hoping SKS will be able to do a marriage look-up from 1897, that is not filmed. I had sent about 10 various look-up requests to the BC Genealogical Society and they sent back all but one. It only has a Reg. #. Would anyone out there be able to do the look-up in Victoria for me? I don't know if Vancouver would have it. It may just be a church record, I don't know. B.C Vital Stat's wants $50.00 to do the look-up. BCGS was much more reasonable. The information is: STRAUBE, Valentine and KOLONOSKY, Mary, married 16th of February, 1897. Reg.# - 1897-09-900201, not filmed, no GSU. I appreciate your help in this matter. Thanks, Judy Blackfalds, Alberta elista@telusplanet.net ==== CAN-BRITISH-COLUMBIA Mailing List ==== Visit the British Columbia Gen Web page at http://www.rootsweb.com/~canbc/