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Family Tree Magazine Podcast
Exploring Divorce Records – An Interview with Judy Russell
00:32:12
In this episode of the Family Tree Magazine podcast, Judy Russell tells us what genealogists can expect to find in divorce records.
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- [00:12]
Lisa Louise Cook
Welcome to the Family Tree Magazine podcast. This is the show from America's number one genealogy magazine. I'm Lisa Louise Cook.
- [00:24]
Host/Interviewer (possibly a Family Tree Magazine host)
There are many different types of genealogical records that we look for throughout our time in our genealogy research, but one of them may not pop up as often, and it has a couple of little unique challenges of its own, but it's really worth covering. And those are divorce records. And here to talk to us about them is Judy Russell. You know her. She's the legal genealogist. Hi, Judy.
- [00:47]
Judy Russell
Hi, Lisa. How are you doing?
- [00:49]
Host/Interviewer (possibly a Family Tree Magazine host)
Great. Happy to have you here. I saw your article in the March, April issue of Family Tree magazine, and it's on page 60, all about divorce records. And I think this is a wonderful. Just total coverage of a record type that we just don't get to see as often. Right.
- [01:08]
Judy Russell
Well, I think it. It's out there a lot more often than people think. And people have a kind of a misconception that, you know, this would never have happened in my family. It happened a lot. And there are going to be a lot of records out there, and they're. They're wonderful genealogical records.
- [01:29]
Richard Miller
Ah.
- [01:29]
Host/Interviewer (possibly a Family Tree Magazine host)
So they must have lots of clues. Okay, so tell us. Start us off with what kinds of clues and information are we going to find in a divorce record?
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Judy Russell
Well, let me just give you one example. And this is a divorce that was granted or applied for in Washington State in 1890. It's multiple pages, but on one page of this divorce record, we get the full name of the wife, including her maiden name, the full name of the husband, the date, county, state of their marriage, which was In November of 1880, the names and birth dates of both of their daughters. Now, the marriage was in Wisconsin in 1880, in November, which means it was after the 1880 census. The daughters were of an age that they were going to be possibly married by the 1900 census. This is the only record that puts this family together in Washington in this entire time period. It's. It's literally priceless.
- [02:51]
Host/Interviewer (possibly a Family Tree Magazine host)
Right, Exactly.
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Judy Russell
Frequently get allegations of misconduct. The wives who sought divorces from their husbands frequently named the other woman. There's all kinds of good stuff in divorce records.
- [03:08]
Host/Interviewer (possibly a Family Tree Magazine host)
Wow. So lots of unique details, divorce record coverage. And you talked a little bit in your article about terminology and divorce laws. It's so important to understand the background and what's happening in order to understand the record we're looking at. Tell us more about that.
- [03:28]
Judy Russell
Absolutely. The most important thing to keep in mind is that initially the notion was that divorce ought to be really hard to get in most of the country, the. The concept was keep families together. Don't let people get out of a decision that they've made for easy reasons. So in England initially, if you look at the English common law, the only ground for divorce was adultery, and usually adultery by the wife. He could get away with things, she could not. When you got to America, we had to change things because we had something the English didn't, and that was running room. So desertion was a big issue here in North America. Initially, divorces had to be granted almost exclusively by the legislatures. So you get a whole different kind of record set. You get people petitioning the legislature for a divorce. Then there's got to be a bill introduced in the legislature, the actions of the legislature and even the signing of any bill that was passed by the governor of that jurisdiction. We don't start getting judicial divorces in most of the country until the 1830s, 40s, 50s. In Delaware, they were still granting legislative divorces in the early years of the 1900s. So a whole different kind of record set. If it's a legislative divorce, once it gets to be a judicial divorce, then it's at least going to follow the same pattern that we're used to of, you know, a case being filed and an answer being filed and a court decision. But in most cases, you're not going to get a jury trial. So there are differences in divorce records compared to almost any other kind of record that we deal with.
- [05:39]
Host/Interviewer (possibly a Family Tree Magazine host)
Yeah, and very dependent on the location you're talking about, the time frame that you're talking about. And you mentioned the process that gets me wondering about, is there more than one document we're looking for? You know, I think about naturalization, and some people make the mistake that just that final document. But there were ones leading up to it. What should we be looking for in terms of how many and what kinds of documents?
- [06:05]
Judy Russell
Again, it's. There's going to be a difference between your legislative divorce and your judicial divorce, except in the states where you had to have both. So in a legislative divorce, the first thing you want to look for is the petition, the request of the individual for legislative action. It's generally going to be chock full of information. The date and place of the marriage, the nature of the claim for the divorce, whether there were any children, whether there ought to be a property division of some kind. So the petition is going to be filed even in cases where the legislature said no. So you want that petition. Those are going to be legislative records. Then if a legislation in a Private bill was introduced. There's going to be a separate legislative action. There may be debates, and those are going to be reported in published volumes of the House of Representatives of a state or the state Senate or both. Then ultimately a bill approved by the governor if there's going to be a divorce granted. So a lot of different kinds of records, and potentially in two or three different record sets for legislative divorces, you come over to the courts, you're going to have a complaint, usually called a bill for the divorce. There may or may not be an answer. And, you know, we got to be careful if there isn't an answer in accepting at face value the allegations in that first complaint, because people went in and accused the other side of everything under the sun. Sure not always going to be true. But look for a complaint, look for an answer, look for claims for things like temporary support, temporary custody of children, and then ultimately, whatever judicial action is taken in some jurisdictions, you're going to have to have both. In Alabama, for example, to get a divorce in the early 1800s, you had to have a decision by a court that you were legally qualified for a divorce, and then the legislature had to approve it as well. So you're going to get two sets of records in a divorce like that.
- [08:45]
Host/Interviewer (possibly a Family Tree Magazine host)
So that makes me think about the genealogist who's saying, okay, I've made my way back to another generation and I've confronted that. It looks like there was a divorce, and it's in this particular state and it's back in 1850. Where does the genealogist get the information and find out what the pieces were, what the type of divorces were, what's the resource that they would go to before they start the digging?
- [09:12]
Judy Russell
You know, probably the most important place for any genealogist to start with a record set that they're not accustomed to, like this one, is going to be the state archives. Almost every state archives website is going to have an explanation of the basic types of genealogical records, and divorce records clearly fall into that category.
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Host/Interviewer (possibly a Family Tree Magazine host)
Yeah.
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Judy Russell
So they will explain how divorces were granted at different times in that state's history and where the records are today, whether they're legislative records that are in the state archives or court records that we have to go to the county courthouses to get copies of today. And they're also going to tell us something we don't want to talk about, and that's. Are those records closed for a period of time? Almost every jurisdiction is going to close divorce records for. For some period to protect personal privacy. Those of us who are alive today who've gone through divorces don't want the details of our family's dirty linen being aired. So records tend to be closed for 25, 50, even 75 or 100 years. That's going to be a complicating factor. It's also going to be a bit of a complication if our families lived in states where it was really hard to get a divorce. In New York, for example, right up until the 1970s, the only grounds for divorce was adultery. In South Carolina, they didn't allow divorce at all for any reason except for one 10 year period in the 1800s. So what did people do if they were living in a state like that? They went to a state where divorce was easier to get. And that's going to change over time. You know, we think Nevada, everybody goes to Reno. What did they do in 1850? There wasn't a Nevada.
- [11:28]
Host/Interviewer (possibly a Family Tree Magazine host)
Right.
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Judy Russell
They went to Indiana. Indiana was a divorce mecca in the 1850s. And then when Indiana closed down, it was the territory of Utah. When Utah closed down, it was the Dakota Territory. Much later we get to Nevada. And in truth, in the 1960s, the big divorce mecca wasn't Nevada, it was Alabama. Alabama granted twice as many divorces in the 1960s as Nevada did.
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Host/Interviewer (possibly a Family Tree Magazine host)
Wow.
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Judy Russell
We need to know where to go to find where our people most likely would have filed for a divorce. They wanted to stay home, but if it was too hard to get a divorce, they would go where they needed to go to get one.
- [12:24]
Host/Interviewer (possibly a Family Tree Magazine host)
You know, Judy, I've heard so many people say as they're researching their family, well, I think they just went their separate ways and then they just got remarried somewhere else. And they kind of assume, because the divorce is not sitting there in the records of the archive in the state where they were at, that that's it. And what I hear you saying is it sounds like you need to get the map out and start looking at the closest jurisdictions and borders that are nearby that might have had more Len rules.
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Judy Russell
Absolutely. You know, we all know that our ancestors ran away to get married.
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Host/Interviewer (possibly a Family Tree Magazine host)
Right.
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Judy Russell
We think about the Gretna Greens, but we don't think about the divorce meccas. And we need to. It's going to be much, much easier for a New Yorker to have gone to Indiana. I mean, it was right on the train line. They didn't even have to give notice to the spouse back in New York, except by putting an ad in the newspaper in. In Indiana. So it was really easy to get a divorce in Indiana compared to New York.
- [13:30]
Lisa Louise Cook
How common do you really think it was?
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Host/Interviewer (possibly a Family Tree Magazine host)
Do you have any sense how many people just didn't go through with the divorce and went on their merry way and the next person.
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Judy Russell
There's no question that it happened.
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Host/Interviewer (possibly a Family Tree Magazine host)
Yeah.
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Judy Russell
And it happened a lot. We find evidence of it in, in kind of strange places like Civil War pension files, where you get a contest between two women both claiming to be the widow of the deceased soldier.
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Host/Interviewer (possibly a Family Tree Magazine host)
Yeah.
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Judy Russell
One of whom has, I mean, they both got marriage records and neither of them has a divorce record. So, yeah, it certainly happened. It was again, an easy thing for people to do until right up until 9, 11, you didn't even have to go to court to change your name. You just went the next county over and started over. So there's no doubt that it happened. But a lot of times when say, a husband would run off with another woman, the wife would go to court because she needed the legal right to, you know, sell things out the back door of, you know, sell the vegetables from the vegetable garden and not have to worry about her husband showing up and saying, give me the money. So it. People did tend to try to get divorces and I think we're going to find a lot more records than we suspect.
- [15:05]
Host/Interviewer (possibly a Family Tree Magazine host)
Well, particularly following many of these techniques. I know you mentioned that sometimes the cases will be closed for a certain length of time, just like the census is, you know, closed when it's first taken. How available do you feel like records are and maybe help set the expectations of the listener as to how far back they'll kind of need to go before they can really get access to divorce records again.
- [15:30]
Judy Russell
It's a time and place rule right now. Anybody could go on to Ancestry if they have a subscription and, and look at divorce records from Virginia that are almost right up to today. They are open records. They, you know, there's very little closure period. And so there are individual states that, that tend to be very open with their records. There are others where 50 years would be a short closure period. 75, 100, 125 years now being imposed in a lot of cases. So one really good place to start if we want more information about records access is the FamilySearch wiki. Yeah, the FamilySearch research wiki, which of course, you know, we all know familysearch.org we all know that it's a free website. We simply have to register to be able to use it. The wiki, the kind of user contributed background information. Part of the website has really good information about records access and records closure periods. For all of the vital records type records. So birth, marriage, divorce and death are all going to be included. And they'll tell us state one, open records, state two, 125 year closure period. And most of the wikis will also tell us where the records are held.
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Host/Interviewer (possibly a Family Tree Magazine host)
Yeah, it's a terrific resource. And in fact, we'll put a link in the show notes for this episode because you can even go directly to the wiki site itself. And you don't even have to sign in at all. You can just, you know, look through it. So it's a tremendous resource. You mentioned record loss and privacy loss, and we've been talking about privacy laws a bit in terms of whether they're open or not. But record loss, what are we looking at there?
- [17:42]
Judy Russell
Record loss is going to be more common in jurisdictions where the courts handled divorces and where the courthouses burned or were flooded or were hit by lightning or whatever. So in legislative divorces cases, it tends to be more rare that we have records lost. Most legislatures were pretty good in maintaining their records. Once we get out into the judicial records, though, clearly we're going to have records loss. The Civil War obviously impacted huge swaths of the country. I do research in Alabama with my family and in Mississippi with my family. I've got one case where six or seven courthouses all burned and they were all in the 1870s and 1880s. So it's simply that they built wooden courthouses.
- [18:42]
Host/Interviewer (possibly a Family Tree Magazine host)
Yeah.
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Judy Russell
In those jurisdictions, it's entirely possible that all of the marriage books, all of the divorce books, they're going to be lost, which means we have to try to work around the records loss. We can start with the newspapers. Divorce was scandalous. People loved eating up the records of divorces. So newspapers frequently published details about divorces. That's probably the first line of defense in a records loss situation.
- [19:24]
Host/Interviewer (possibly a Family Tree Magazine host)
And you mentioned putting ads in papers. Is that pretty much across the board? How common was that? Because, gosh, what a wonderful clue that would be. Sometimes newspapers are easier to get to more quickly establish where the divorce is happening, and then you might be able to know where to go to get it.
- [19:40]
Judy Russell
Yep. So when people had to give notice to the absent spouse, they frequently had to do it in the newspaper. So there are a lot of legal notices. It frustrates me almost to tears that people go to newspapers and they, you know, they'll put in a name or they'll put in a place or a combination of place and name and they'll only look in the news columns and all of that stuff. That says legal notice, they disregard. That's where the good stuff is. So if you had to give notice, you would do it in the legal notice columns. If what you were saying was, I won't pay his or her debts anymore because he or she has left my bed and board, that's in the legal notice columns. So the entire newspaper is first place to look for potential evidence of a divorce. But another place to look is any remarriage, any marriage certificate. If you find a marriage license application, they would tend to ask, has either party been married before? And if so, how did the marriage end? And I've seen a lot of marriage license applications where it not only says, yes, I was married before it ended in divorce, but it actually gives the year and the court where that earlier divorce was granted. So that's a really good place to look.
- [21:20]
Host/Interviewer (possibly a Family Tree Magazine host)
Well, and you mentioned that, and that's a great reminder. Just like with divorce records, there could be multiple records. I've talked to many people who don't think to look for the application. They're just going for the license. They get the license and they go, okay, put that date in my tree and keep moving. But, oh, the applications are sometimes the best.
- [21:38]
Judy Russell
Absolutely. We so often in genealogy have to look for. Look for workarounds. Yeah, there's just not going to be that. You know, the divorce record isn't going to be there. So that's one thing we can do. And we can look in places like pension records where they may have had to indicate whether there were prior marriages. A widow is going to have to show that she's legally entitled to a pension based on currently being married to the deceased soldier. So pension applications, land acquisitions, when the land acquisition was based on things like the Homestead act, where a woman would have to prove that she was head of household and a citizen and her citizenship might have depended on her marriage to an American citizen. So there's so many possible workarounds to see what we can find that just give us a hint that there's got to be a divorce record out there someplace.
- [22:50]
Host/Interviewer (possibly a Family Tree Magazine host)
Well, I know you've looked at a lot of them. Any shocking stories or surprises or ones that were good reminders for all those listening about pitfalls to avoid?
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Judy Russell
The biggest thing, of course, is to remember that spelling was not standard until, what, the 20th century? The. The notion that. That you've got a Johnson and is it Johan or Jo? N or Johanston? Don't get hung up on. On spelling. Don't worry so much about first names. People used Mary and Molly And Polly and lots of different first names. They may have used a middle name instead of a first name. So look for family patterns. If you know the name of a child, for example, look for the name of a child. And OMG, for all of us, FamilySearch's launch of its full text searching is the game changer. As they expand from land and probate records into court records. We're going to be able to, you know, we only have the name of a child. Penelope Smith. We're going to be able to search that child now in some of these records where we've never been able to do that before. I think we're on the brink of being able to find a lot more records than we ever have in the past.
- [24:26]
Host/Interviewer (possibly a Family Tree Magazine host)
Yes. Opening up record sets that you just had to literally browse through every page before, and now it's changing the whole ball of wax. It's an exciting time, I think, to do genealogy and I really appreciate you really giving us an in depth look at divorce records. I think it's worth doing this with every record set because of the unique features of each one of them. All of you listening, please go check out Judy Russell's article in the March and April 2025 issue of Family Tree magazine. And Judy, where can folks keep up with you online these days?
- [25:03]
Judy Russell
Still at the Legal genealogist. So it's legalgeneologist.com come on over at Facebook and say hello as well.
- [25:13]
Host/Interviewer (possibly a Family Tree Magazine host)
Yep, check it out. We'll put a link in our show notes. Great to see you. Thank you so much, Judy, for being here on the show.
- [25:19]
Judy Russell
Great to see you, Lisa. Take care.
- [25:23]
Host/Interviewer (possibly a Family Tree Magazine host)
Well, this episode is sponsored by Goldie.
- [25:26]
Lisa Louise Cook
May, and here to take a few minutes to tell us all about it.
- [25:29]
Host/Interviewer (possibly a Family Tree Magazine host)
Is the founder, Richard Miller. Hi, Richard.
- [25:33]
Richard Miller
Hi, Lisa. Thanks for having me here.
- [25:35]
Host/Interviewer (possibly a Family Tree Magazine host)
Tell us, what is Goldie May and how can it help genealogists?
- [25:39]
Richard Miller
Well, thanks for asking. Yes, Goldie May is genealogy research software. So it doesn't have any content, it doesn't have any photos, but it's intended to help you with the research you already do to do it more effectively, more efficiently. So you probably already have a family tree that you use. There are a ton of great sources out there, but maybe the one thing that's missing for some people is that they have a bunch of sticky notes around their monitor or they have papers all over their desk and they think, okay, how could I do that part better? And that's where Goldie May steps in.
- [26:14]
Host/Interviewer (possibly a Family Tree Magazine host)
Oh, that sounds like music to many of our ears. It's the organization piece and the whole research piece. So you said it was software we downloaded to our computer. Tell us a little bit about on a daily basis. What does it look like to work with it?
- [26:29]
Richard Miller
Yeah, so it's, it's lightweight software in the sense that it's a browser extension. So if you've used an extension before, you would go on Chrome or Firefox to your browser, go to goldemay.com and there's an easy installation there to install your extension browser. And there you'll see a little black G G for Goldie May at the top right of your browser. There you'll click it and it will open a little side panel. And that panel is where you get to find additional resources in Goldie May as you continue using whatever software you already use in your browser.
- [27:04]
Host/Interviewer (possibly a Family Tree Magazine host)
Oh, that's great. So give us just an example. What would be a task that we might do where we're going to be tapping into that browser extension?
- [27:13]
Richard Miller
Okay, great question. So one starting point is to create projects. So if you are scribbling notes on your notepads around your desk to keep track of all of the things you're working on, there is a place in Goldie May to start a new project. You put in some kind of objective or research question you're working towards. And then that is a place to put notes, planning, put the subjects you're working with. And importantly, it has a research log there for you. And because it's installed in your browser as you browse the Internet, visiting various web pages around the world, it will keep a list of all the places you visit for you if you turn it on. And then you can mark all the pages you find as you know, this was a really helpful page I found, or this was a negative result that was not a match for what I was looking for. So if you have sometime ever thought I should do a research log, but I don't enjoy doing research logs, then Goldie May tries to step in for you and offer an automatic log where it really will keep that log for you as you go, because it's tracking that for you and it's all part of a project. So if you're done for the day and you may not get back to that particular project until next week or next month, then when you come back to it, you'll jump back into that project, see right where you left off. And then you'll continue from there. And if I can add one important thing, it's that the content is stored in the cloud. So Even though you've installed it in your browser, the data isn't just lost. If your browser is lost, it's stored in the Goldie Maze server. So as you sign in from the library or from your friend's home, all that research will be there with you. So you no longer need to carry around your papers and a notebook with you or a thumb drive that you're going to carry to the library. All that stuff is stored for you as you're doing your research.
- [28:59]
Host/Interviewer (possibly a Family Tree Magazine host)
Wow, that's amazing. And it's even more importantly, I think, right there in your browser where we're spending all of our time. Right, Right.
- [29:06]
Richard Miller
Yeah.
- [29:07]
Host/Interviewer (possibly a Family Tree Magazine host)
So it sounds like we probably need to log in. Is there a cost involved? What is it? And do we need an account?
- [29:15]
Richard Miller
Right? Yes. So you do need an account. So as you sign in, it will ask for your FamilySearch account, which, as you know, is free. And so it requires a FamilySearch account at the moment to sign in. After that, you may or may not use FamilySearch. It will work with your ancestry tree and eth you log from myheritage or elsewhere. All of that will work with Goldie made to do all the project management, the logging, etc. And so once you're signed in, that's all part of your Goldie May account, and then from there, yes, you can kind of carry it with you wherever you may want to go with the research. As far as the cost structure, there are both free and premium features. So if you were to sign up today and just go to GoldieMay.com and install it, you would see there are quite a few things for free. So the project management, the research log are free. There are additional tools to help you evaluate the research. You're finding some graphical tools to help you look at what you're doing. And so some of those are among the premium features that you can find in a Goldie May subscription. For our Family Tree Magazine listeners, there is a discount available to them. So if they go to GoldieMay.com Family Tree magazine, they'll see an offer of 20% off the subscription for up to a year. So this is a place to get that discount if they'd like to look at that too.
- [30:29]
Host/Interviewer (possibly a Family Tree Magazine host)
Wonderful. Well, it sounds fantastic. Who doesn't want to research buddy right there along with them in their web browser? I have to ask you, Richard, where did the name Goldie May come from?
- [30:39]
Richard Miller
Yes, thank you. Goldie is my great grandmother's name and May as we spell it here, M A Y is a family name for my wife's side of the family. So we put those together for our.
- [30:50]
Host/Interviewer (possibly a Family Tree Magazine host)
Our special name that makes total sense. Everybody check it out. It's@goldiemay.com so SL Family Tree magazine. Richard Miller, thank you so much for being here on the podcast.
- [31:01]
Richard Miller
Thank you, Lisa.
- [31:05]
Host/Interviewer (possibly a Family Tree Magazine host)
Thanks for joining me for this episode.
- [31:06]
Lisa Louise Cook
Of the Family Tree Magazine podcast. This is the show from America's number one genealogy magazine. I'll have links to everything that we've talked about today on the show over at the Show Notes page and you can find that@familytree magazine.com and there you'll also find a huge back catalog of past episodes full of topics that are going to help you in your genealogy research. And when you stop by the website, be sure to sign up for our free newsletter. That really is the perfect way to stay in touch with Family Tree Magazine and get all the latest and greatest news, plus the announcements of each and every new podcast episode. I'm Lisa Louise Cook and I hope that you'll come by and visit me at my website, genealogy gems.com and there you will find the Genealogy Gems podcast and a link over to our Genealogy Gems YouTube channel. So until next time, have fun climbing your family tree.