A year ago I wrote about the efforts of Reclaim the Records to obtain copies of indexes for New Jersey vital records in the custody of the State Archives. The group received microfilm rolls of the indexes for:
-Births 1901, 1902, and 1903
-Deaths 1901, 1902, and 1903
-Groom index 1901, 1902, and 1903
-Bride index 1901 through 1914.
Previous acquisitions of New York City records appeared (for free) at Archive.org.
This New Jersey collection is also at Archive.org; however, I found the collection on Ancestry.com also.
To view the vital records indexes at Archive.org, you need to browse page by page to find a desired entry. Ancestry.com has indexed the names- an index of the index. (Records earlier than 1901 are indexed at FamilySearch.org.)
Remember that you are viewing an index and NOT the actual record of birth, marriage, or death. To acquire a copy of the certificate, you need to order it (for a fee) from the Archives in Trenton. (You can place your order online for records through 1915.) Also remember that indexes are not exhaustive and names may be spelled as interpreted by the typist.
I already found an entry for a marriage certificate from 1908 that should help a brick wall. The bride's name is listed in the index as "Blaney." If I have the correct couple, the name should be "Birney."
The marriage certificate was retrieved from the Archives. The bride's surname is indeed Blaney, but she is the correct person. Now to figure out why she used the surname "Blaney" instead of "Birney." Her sister was a witness and used the name "Birney."
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