Methodology Monday with a hungry bulldog

Sometimes you don't need abstruse methodology so much as an attitude. If you can vividly imagine yourself as a hungry bulldog and the evidence you seek as a steamy bowl of dog food, you're just less likely to quit on it!

Recently I had a state marriage return which appeared to have been signed by the county clerk -- as in, the man's signature with "county clerk" printed underneath that line in small type. It was easy to jump to the conclusion that it had been a civil ceremony.

Eventually I came across a county return form for the same event, which made it quite clear that the person signing the first return was in fact the minister who had performed the ceremony! Now I'm off to investigate his denomination -- not that the happy (?) couple stuck around, but just to know which species of minister they went to in their hour of need. But I should have been bulldogging more records of that marriage in the first place.

Just to switch metaphors -- as ESM would say, what a land mine I had left lying there in the meantime!