Access State Public Records

Just because I was curious, I decided to see how quickly I could find my marriage record Online. I got married a little over 6 years ago, in late 2003, so the Internet was already is full use and records had been being kept electronically for a while.

I did a quick Google search for my local county courthouse website. The clerk of courts for Okalossa County, Florida was pretty easy to find. I then went to public records search and typed in my last name, selected the type of record I was looking for and also the date range.

Vioalla! Piece of cake! I found a link to a PDF file that contained the actual marriage certificate/ marriage license  that my wife and I signed. I know that we did get an actual, physical copy of it a little while after we got married, but I honestly don’t know where I filed it!

O well, that’s no big deal. I printed out and saved the PDF version just to have my own personal electronic and hard copy on hand. Not that I really need it for anything that I know of right now, but I just thought I’d share how quick and easy it was to find my marriage license on the Internet.

Even if you were married before records were kept electronically, there is still a very good chance that you can find an electronic version Online. Just because I was curious, I did some searching for other people. I saw different scanned copies of older marriage certificates from the 80’s & 70’s.

Many states started backing up old data by scanning the paper files in the early 2000’s. Not just marriage licenses, but birth certificates, death certificates, and more were scanned, backed-up and are now kept electronically. Each state and county is different, so it is up to you to do the searching.

A search can be as simple as a review of your local county courthouses records. Or you may want to use a little help from a website that accesses these types of public databases. Whatever you choose to do, there is a good chance that you can find the specific record that you are searching for pretty fast.

Another very popular search on the Internet these days are criminal records searches. People try to locate background info on people for various reasons, ranging from possible employment inquires, to just sheer curiosity.

No matter what your particular reason for searching, you have a right to find out if a person you may have to associate with has a criminal history or not. Now I know that people do make mistakes and can change, so I’m not condemning anyone who may have had some minor blemishes or misdemeanors in the past.

Even some people convicted of felonies or deserve another chance, depending on the nature of the crime and particular incident.  Obviously there are certain crimes that are inexcusable and some people never change. And there are also going to be those who were wrongly convicted, but nevertheless their criminal history will be recorded in a federal or state database somewhere and could possibly haunt them for a long time.

Still, like I already mentioned, you have the right to research or investigate an individual who may have a criminal past. You can quickly find criminal records through certain websites that have access to state databases. My favorite resource for finding this kind of stuff is Gov-Resources.com.

You can spend hours digging through piles of useless information and get lost in the Internet maze, or you can can save yourself the headache and go right to the people who are experts at organizing easy access to all kinds of records. Everything from court records, to marriage records, divorce records, inmate records, death records, birth records, and more can be found through Gov-Resources.com.

Do yourself a favor, and go there right now and get the data you’re looking for! You’ll be happy that you did. Good luck and happy searching!