Susan, Marcia: I have a copy of the I.G.I. Reference Guide and it states the following: "A batch number consists of seven characters. The first letter or numbers indicate the type of source. M......(except M17, M18) This source is a marriage record extracted as part of the record extraction program. You may find parents' names, witnesses' names, birth dates and places, the ages of the bride and groom, or the groom's or the father's occupation; the source may not contain any additional information. M.....17 & M.....18) The source is an early Latter-day saint temple sealing record. The information on these records was extracted in the 1790s. As a general rule, if the marriage date and place were not listed in the temple record, the entry was not extracted. However, it was not always possible to tell whether the sealing date and place were, also the original marriage date and place. Therefore, some names were extracted with the sealing date and place used for the marriage date and place, especially names from Utah, Arizona, Mexico, Hawaii, Nebraska, Iowa, and Alberta. These names have M 17..... and M 18 batch numbers. The marriage information may be incorrect. For example, a couple may have been married in England 20 years before they were sealed. However, the sealing to spouse ordinance information is correct." Hope this helps. Mickey susan wilson wrote: > Marcia, > I went to the LDS site (www.familysearch.org) but could not find the > document in question. Usually the M prior to a number is a batch number for > the LDS listings. I do not know what a batch number refers to. The second > number could be a microfilm number. I placed it in their search engine and > it does not reference a Geiger file. So maybe that is a national archives > microfilm number. If the M is a batch number from the LDS, you can contact > them from the site and see if it refers to one of their numbers. I know my > ancestor was on that list and I found the microfilm at the Georgia state > archives but I never tried to cross reference the numbers. Maybe if you > research Ohio microfilms from the LDS or National Archives of Ohio state > archives you can find the original documents. Susan > ----- Original Message ----- > From: <[email protected]> > To: <[email protected]> >