Arkansas Co AR Marriages 1893-1993

The format for this series of books was designed specifically to address an extreme weakness in genealogical research methodology as it existed in the later half of the last century. The primary component of this solution was an extremely large data base of records which could be accessed via computer instantly to provide location of additional existent and more complete records needed by researchers. Marriage records were uniquely the form of research in need of this additional research methodology.

Several barriers to this project will be lost to the fog of history unless mentioned somewhere so here are a few; A few County Clerks were naturally obstinate. The worst two were Parish Clerks in Louisiana, one of Assumption Parish, who would not allow our elderly collection team any access to the records unless they stood at the counter and hand copied the data. The books containing the dates were in a separate book and to see it required an individual retrieval and put back for each marriage. A neighboring parish, Ascension, arrested and prosecuted my wife and I for conducting a legal bingo (the mayor himself had issued the permit) to raise funds to continue the data collection process when the inheritance my parents had left, run out.

Another involves an deceitful lady named "Annie" and the Mississippi Genealogy Society who seemed to have no problem with taking the data that HFB had trained and paid teams of reseachers to travel to each local county courthouse, collect the data, process it and publish it. Annie and MGS later publishes it on the internet and locally in print form thereby, negating any chance of recouping any of the expenditure put out in accruing the data. I first became aware of Annie's attitutude toward data colleced at other's expense when I found she had done the same in the LaGenWeb, where we were both web page file managers. Nick and Dorothy Murray had expended tremendous effort establishing directly or indirectly over half of the Genealogy Societies in Mississippi and two-thirds of those in Louisiana, and had trained and hired many of these new enthusiasts as team members in their data gathering project. To have several of these "researchers" betray their friends and mentors in this manner is inexplicable!