Last month we looked at birth certificates and what you can learn from them. This month, we follow with marriage licenses and death certificates. Why do we cram two types of documents into one column? Well, frankly, the Cook County marriage license has so little data that it would be the world’s shortest column!

The fact is that Cook County created a format for the marriage license in 1871, and at least as of 1964 the format was relatively the same. The paper is split into two halves. The top half lists the name of the groom and his age, and the bride and her, ahem, age, too.