This collection contains images of the index to New York City marriage licenses, applications, and affidavits. These records were obtained and published by the non-profit group Reclaim The Records, through two successful Freedom of Information lawsuits brought against the city in 2015 and 2016.

These marriage license records were originally kept by the New York City Clerk's Office. Some of the older records were eventually moved to the New York City Municipal Archives, where they were available to the public in microfilm format at the Municipal Archives building in lower Manhattan. The newer records that remained at the City Clerk's Office were completely inaccessible to the public. And none of the data in either location was online at all or available outside of New York City.

In 2015 and 2016, the non-profit activist group Reclaim The Records filed two Freedom of Information lawsuits to finally obtain and publish the first-ever public copies of these microfilms: the first case was brought against the NYC Municipal Archives to acquire the 1908-1929 microfilms, and the second one was against the New York City Clerk's Office for the 1930-1972 microfilms. The two sets of films were scanned and uploaded to the Internet Archive in early 2016 and early 2017, respectively.

For more information about Reclaim The Records, and our work to obtain and freely publish archival record sets, check out ReclaimTheRecords.org, or follow us on Twitter at @ReclaimTheRecs.

This data is in the public domain.