For Joan and others: Yes, there were marriage applications in 1876. I guess that sentence in my prior e-mail wasn't clear. I have in my hands the 1876 marriage application for a couple in Livingston Co., IL. As I remember, I located this when I stopped at the courthouse on my way to a genealogy seminar near Springfield, IL. What I was seeking were some old tax books I had seen in a basement room on a prior trip. They were by year and by township. (As I understand it, the basement is in two sections, and you cannot go from one side to the other, but must come upstairs and access the "other" part of the basement from some office on that other side. It was lunch time, and the young girl at the counter in the County Clerk's office told me to go on downstairs. I wish I had taken notes of what I saw at the time, but there were lots of ledger type books on shelving and several file cabinets absolutely crammed with documents. Somewhere, in one of these, I found this 1876 marriage application. When I came upstairs with several items to be copied, an older woman was behind the counter and almost had a coronary that I had been down there, and unsupervised. I never did find the tax records, and no one in the collector or assessor's office knew what I was talking about. Linda K.