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COUSINS MANY OF YU NO DOUBT KNOW THIS> BUT MANY OF OUR
Ancestors_________< JUST did not think about their Descendants Looking for them &
AGAIN,
Records have not always Left to the CONCERN OF Ancstors. HOPE this Helps you
ALL ton understand that those SEARCHED for RECORDS JUST ARE NOT Always going
to be Found.SAD BUT TRUE> COMENT? CUZ AT
Search billions of records on
Ancestry.com
EARLY MARRIAGE RECORDS SCARCE _©_
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http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~seky/folfoot/019.html#notice)
by Holly Timm
[originally published 6 May 1987]
Harlan Daily Enterprise Penny Pincher]
One of the major difficulties tracing a family line back is locating
marriage records before 1900. This major source for family names on the female
side can often be difficult to find if not impossible. There are several
reasons for this.
Some records have been lost over the years. Until sometime in the 1870's,
marriage records in this area were kept in the form of loose bonds and
returns. Some of these odds and ends of pieces of paper were simply misplaced,
others were turned over to the individuals for filing with pension
applications.
Late in the 19th century, about 1890, all the remaining early marriages in
Harlan County were recopied by the county court clerk's office into two
marriage registers, Book A and Book One. Most of the early marriages were
copied twice. The originals were then apparently thrown away.
Other marriages, although properly performed, were never actually recorded.
It was not uncommon for a couple to be married by a traveling preacher
riding a circuit of congregations in the mountains. These circuit riders did
not always bother to drop in at the county seat and record the marriages
they had performed in that county.
Other marriages performed by the local justice of the peace were also not
necessarily turned in to the county court clerk. Accuracy and ability with
paperwork was not a requirement for the office of magistrate or justice of
the peace and some of them had to be prodded by the court to turn in any of
their papers when they were no longer in office.
Although a couple may have lived in one county, the nearest place to get
married may have been in another county or in another state. Many people from
upper Martins Fork and Cranks got married in Lee County, Va. Others from
the Letcher County area went to Wise County, Va., to be married. People on
Pucketts and Brownies Creek might have been married in Bell County, or
before 1867 when Bell was formed, in Knox County.
If you are trying to trace your family, a marriage in Virginia is to be
hoped for as the names of the bride and groom's parents were recorded in most
of the Virginia records from the early years, but were not included in
Kentucky records until late in the century and even then, that part of the
license form was often not filled out.
Not all couples were legally married. Unless a couple lived near a justice
of the peace or the county seat, it was necessary to take considerable time
away from the dawn-to-dusk work of life to go in and attend to the
paperwork that many people felt unnecessary. The cash required for the license fee
was often not so easy to come by either.
Instead, some marriages were what some people call `broom-stick' marriages.
The term broomstick comes from the tradition in some areas of placing a
broomstick across the doorway of the couple's intended home. The bridal pair
would step over the stick together signifying their commitment to each
other. In their own eyes and those of their families and neighbors they were
considered married and they acted and lived as such.
This sort of marriage was not uncommon in the early years and some of these
couples were later properly married with all the paperwork which accounts
for some of the discrepancies between recorded marriage dates and the
birthdates of the oldest children. If the wife and children consistently went by
the man's surname in census and other records and a recorded marriage
cannot be found, this implies either a lost record or a `broomstick' marriage,
as does references to wife and children in deeds, wills and pension
records.
Simply living together was more common in isolated frontier areas such as
Harlan than it was in areas like New England with older more civilized
settlements. But, it must be remembered that people were more casual about
their names as well and there are documented instances of children taking their
mother's surname even though their parents had been legally married. This
might occur in cases where the parents were divorced, but is also known to
have occurred when the father died when the children were young and the
mother returned to her people.
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last edited Thursday, 05-Jun-2008 14:32:24 MDT