This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/CGC.2ACI/771.2 Message Board Post: Correction: While births and deaths were not required to be recorded until 1907, marriages were supposed to registered. However, pastors from the far end of the county were not about to hitch up and drive to Oshkosh to file paperwork the next day, the post office might not be too handy (rural home delivery was not established until after 1900), and papers got stuffed into pigeonholes to await the next trip. From Winchester, the easiest travel was actually by steamboat in summer, but winter weddings might have waited for the first boat trip of spring. You can see in the record books that some pastors turned in 6 months or so of marriages at a time. And of course, some may have gotten lost in the process. But the church record is often better anyway, especially in the earlier years.