Mike It varies. My gg grandfather got married in the Catholic church in Troy in November 1852 and the only information it had on it was the name of the bride and groom and the witnesses. When his brother got married in Montreal in 1843, the marriage information the names of the parents and perhaps the name of the county. Another set of gg grandparents got married in the Catholic Church in Oswego in May 1849. The CW pension record where the marriage "certificate" was found contains no more information because the local priest apparently kept the records in a little notebook, now lost. Having lots of Irish lines the only time I found out about the county much less the town they came from was either (a) an obituary or (b) family tradition which with the way Irish surnames only appear in certain counties --- that doesn't help isolate the information. Quite frankly, with my McGrath line (which is from of course Tipperary) I don't think they lived in a town but rather on plot of land on some English overlord's agricultural holdings. The entire family was uprooted in 1841 or 42 and went first to Canada. They were dirt poor so their passage may have been paid for by their English overlord to the cheapest destination as was the case with many Irish. They may never have remembered or cared what township they were from. The only Irish ancestor that I have a definitive place is my ggg grandparents Clugston who were from Newton-Hamilton in Ulster. How did I find this out? Well, my ggg grandmother was a devout Presbyterian and she gave a letter to the local Presbyterian church from the Presbyterian church in Ireland stating that she was a member in good standing and could be admitted to any Presbyterian congregation without any formal initiation. But then, most of my Irish ancestors are Catholic and it would be hard enough to find meaningful church records on them. I found that certainly between 1880 and 1910, the record keeping was hapazard and shoddy. You can more readily find vital statistics records on males, including church records, than you can on females is another problem you apparently haven't encountered. The city clerk cannot find a birth record for my grandmother who was born in 1889 in Oswego as her mother had been before her. The other problem I found was that in the records for the first generation of Irish - Americans, they wanted to cover-up their parents "foreign roots" so the country would suffice. And quite frankly, the recorders didn't care either. They weren't thinking about us! I know this isn't terribly helpful and doing research in this time period is consequently oh so frustrating. At some point, I decided that they were from "Ireland" or "Germany" and that my nephews and nieces who are now ggg grandchildren are happy enough that I got them back to the boat if not the old country. Best Tom Ebert --- On Thu, 3/29/12, M McAlonie <[email protected]> wrote: From: M McAlonie <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [NY-TROY-IRISH-GENSOC] question about info on NYS vitalsstats certifiactes To: "TIGS" <[email protected]> Date: Thursday, March 29, 2012, 3:40 PM what about a marriage certificate? > > I concur with Rosemary.  I only once heard of someone getting the county in > Ireland from a death certificate. > > Donna >                           ===NY-IRISH-GENSOC Mailing List=== Time for Society Members to pay up their **2012 Dues**.  See the Website for details: Troy Irish Genealogy Society www.rootsweb.com/~nytigs/ Click ON - "JOIN TIGS NOW!" to get form. ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message