Bonds May Provide Time Of Union

What are marriage bonds, you ask, and why are they important to your genealogy?

The answer can be found in a 1992 Bluegrass Roots magazine article, portions of which I’ll share with you.

Marriage bonds were instituted in colonial Virginia to prevent couples from being married who were not qualified to marry.

A disqualification might occur if one of the party was already married, not old enough to marry or was an indentured servant without permission from his or her master.

Or the couple were too closely related within a family.

Marriage bonds were instituted by an act of the Virginia Assembly in 1661.

In part, the act states, “persons desiring lycenses for marriage shall repaire to the clerk of the county court and there give bond with sufficient security that there is no lawfull cause to obstruct their said marriage.”

The bond, paid to the governor, was about 200 pounds of tobacco or 20 shillings sterling.

The act also specified that “the clerk shall yearely in September court returne the names of the partyes marryed.”

In 1748, Virginia ruled that licenses should be issued by the county clerk where the bride resided, and in 1784, clerks generally began keeping registers of marriage.

When Kentucky became a commonwealth in 1792, it adopted many of Virginia’s laws, including the one on marriage licenses and bonds.

By this time, the amount of the bond had been changed to pounds sterling in English money. The fee in Kentucky was 50 pounds. Sometime around the 1840s, the amount was changed to $50.

Virginia discontinued marriage bonds in 1849. In the 1850s, Kentucky amended their bond requirement to read that a bond need be posted only when the parties were unknown to the clerk. That law still stands today.

According to the magazine article, this is no evidence that a marriage bond in either Virginia or Kentucky was ever forfeited.

While this “old stuff” may sound odd now, it’s important to remember that marriage bonds are a good source of information for genealogists studying early marriages, particularly in the South.

While the bonds don’t prove that a marriage took place, they present strong evidence of the approximate date of a marriage. Sometimes, the bond may be the only evidence found for a marriage.

Marriage bonds may also provide other useful information: They were always signed by the prospective groom, and usually the bride’s father signed for her. If the bride’s father was dead, or otherwise unable to sign, some other man in her family might sign for her, thus providing another genealogy clue.

If you’d like to read the entire article, including the fuller quotation of the law enacted by the Virginia Assembly in 1661, head for Bluegrass Roots, Vol. 19, No. 4, Winter 1992, pages 121-122.

Today’s Laugh: In a cemetery near Boston is a curious trio of graves, those of a man and his two wives. The stone on the left reads, “He was mine.” The one on the right reads, “He was mine also.”

Each shows a hand reaching toward the middle stone.

In the middle lies the lord himself, and upon his stone are carved two hands reaching out to both the others.

Above them are the significant words, “They were both mine.”

, DataTimes MEMO: Donna Potter Phillips welcomes letters from readers. Write to her at The Spokesman-Review, Features Department, P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210. For a response, please include a self-addressed, stamped envelope.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Donna Potter Phillips The Spokesman-Review