When Marlin Sarvey and Myrtle Wolfe, now 98 and 94, applied for their marriage license on Sept. 12, 1940, they traveled to the Butler County Courthouse, as couples still do today.

However, the Sarveys answered more questions than any of the couples going to apply for a marriage license this week.

Myrtle Sarvey doesn't remember the courthouse visit, but she had no trouble remembering the location of their marriage license. It was in a safe.

“I always keep important papers,” she said.

The Sarveys will celebrate their 76th anniversary this month.

The Office of the Register of Wills, Clerk of Orphans Court, has copies of marriage license applications dating back to 1885. The collection shows continuing changes to the application that reflect societal concerns and issues.

On Oct. 6, 1910, J.F. Campbell of West Sunbury and Lydia Morrow of Karns City had only 20 items on their application.

By June 16, 1937, when Paul Shever of Harmony and Hannah Willetts of Zelienople applied for their license at the office of Justice of The Peace Edwin Meeder, there were twice as many questions.

Back then, people could apply for a license close to home. The county issued blank forms to justices of the peace who met with the couple and then sent the completed application and payment to the courthouse. Couples no longer can apply at a justice of the peace.

The Sarveys' application was almost exactly the same as the one the Shevers completed in 1937.

One of the questions required each applicant to disclose if they were “afflicted with any transmissible disease.”

“I'm sure they were thinking of venereal diseases,” said Larry Breitenstein, assistant professor of public health and social work at Slippery Rock University.

He said public health authorities were concerned about syphilis, but laws of the time required reporting of tuberculosis and typhoid. Laboratory tests were not sophisticated enough to differentiate between all sexually transmitted diseases that are known now.

Breitenstein said the question today probably refers to sexually transmitted diseases and, perhaps, hepatitis. Yet, it only requires a yes or no answer.

Another question on the form was, “Is the man an imbecile, epileptic, of unsound mind or under guardianship as a person of unsound mind, or under the influence of any intoxicating liquor or narcotic drug?” The woman was asked the same question.

“(An imbecile) was probably someone with a low IQ,” Breitenstein said. “We know IQ tests were suspect then.”

He said the tests had cultural biases against those who did not have English as a first language, and that affected the many immigrant parents and their children in the 1920s and 1930s.

“I think back then most people thought epilepsy was a mental health condition,” Breitenstein said. “I know that prevailed into the '70s.”

He said there were citizens who wanted assurance “that people who were insane could not reproduce. They could sterilize people. They didn't have the rigors of our legal system.

“We really didn't have the modern idea of the mental health system,” Breitenstein said.

He said there were many references to “of unsound mind” in Pennsylvania laws that were later repealed.

A related question was just for men, “Has the man, within five years, been an inmate of any county asylum or home for indigent persons?”

Breitenstein thought that would have been a state asylum for the chronically insane.

“You could have someone committed at that time just because they were a public drunk,” he said. “Being committed today is a far more rigorous process.”

Even in 1910, each applicant was asked about an occupation.

According to Aaron Cowan, associate professor of history at Slippery Rock University, around the time of the Great Depression, about 25 percent of women were working outside their homes. In the 1930s, women entered the work force at twice the rate of men.

“It was more common than we would typically think,” said Cowan. “(Companies) typically could pay a woman a lot less so there was a shift to larger numbers of women working outside the home.”

The attitude toward married women who had to work varied by individual and by class.

“For families that were middle class or thought of themselves as well-to-do, it really could be a blow,” Cowan said. “For poorer families that was always the case and that was what was necessary.”Cowan said the difficulty of women finding work during the 1930s was that they were a threat to a man's masculinity.“There were states that actually had laws by the 1930s that women had to leave jobs when they married,” Cowan said. “The belief presumably was that she had a husband to take care of her and shouldn't take a job from a man.”He said labor unions wanted full employment for men and were against women working. But in the 1940s, many women took jobs due to World War II.There was another question just for men: “Is the man physically able to support a family?”They wanted to make sure, Cowan said, that “you're not creating a household where there's no way to provide for a family and would end up being wards of the state.”Cowan said the man's physical condition was important. In the 1930s a lot of the work involved physical labor.A box to indicate race lingered on the application until the end of December 1994, although by then information was no longer recorded.“Pennsylvania got rid of a law against interracial marriages in 1788,” Cowan said. “I'm sure there were lots of social pressures and prejudices but it would not have been illegal.“(It) was still illegal in some states,” he said.In 1910 and today, the applications have included a statement about the “relationship of the parties.” In Pennsylvania, a person cannot marry a parent, a sibling, an aunt, an uncle or a first cousin.A major requirement for a marriage license changed in the 1970s when the legal voting age became 18 as a result of the Vietnam War. About that time the legal age for marrying without parental permission also dropped to 18. Parental permission or permission from a guardian is still necessary for applicants under 18 and for those under 16, permission has to come from a judge.Having a blood test before marriage was once a requirement. Breitenstein said that law was repealed in 1997.The most recent change to the application came shortly after May 20, 2014, when same-sex marriages became legal in Pennsylvania. The application in Butler County had two columns, the left for “male applicant” and the right for “female applicant.” Now both headings are “applicant.”The state of Pennsylvania dictates what questions and other items are on the application for a marriage license. Sooner or later, the public may think the form should be altered again but it will take a change in Pennsylvania law to make it happen.