Wedding Wednesday - The Binding of Lewis Harris

The Harris and Berry families are unique among all my family lines in that they are the primary reason I go into genealogy. Way back in 1998, while serving a mission in Japan for my church, I got a letter from my grandma Sally about some family history she had found. I don't know when she got started, but she'd put together a pedigree chart of her ancestors, and included pictures I had never seen. Seeing those old pictures struck something in me, and I had to know more. I had to wait until after I got home the following year, but when I did, I immediately dove headfirst into family history research, and have loved every minute of it since. So when I get a chance to find something new on the Harris or Berry families in my tree, I usually jump on it.

While doing research for a client recently, I traced part of their family tree back from Texas into Kentucky. While looking for records of the family in Kentucky, I came across a record set of Kentucky marriages that included images of the original records. As my Harris and Berry lines came from Woodford County, Kentucky, I wondered if I might be able to get actual images of some of their marriages. Up until now, all I've seen are indexes and extracts, which are not the same. So when I took a break from the work, I went back to the database and went looking for the marriage of my 4th-great-grandparents, Lewis Harris and Lucinda Berry. I found two hits for their marriage. I wondered why there would be two, thinking maybe there was some kind of second return, or a duplicate record or something. So I pulled up the first one, hoping to get some new information from these records.

The first record was basically just an index - date of the marriage, names of the contracting parties, and the name of the officiating minister. Not exactly what I was hoping for, but it is cool to know the name of the person who married my ancestors. So I saved it and went back to the second record.

The second record was much more interesting! It was a marriage bond for Thomas B. Berry (probably Lucinda's older brother) and Lewis Harris. Thomas and Lewis put themselves on the hook to pay 50 pounds if the intended marriage of Lewis Harris and Lucinda Berry did not take place. If the marriage did go through as intended, the obligation was made void and neither party would have to pay anything. I was fascinated that even though the marriage occurred in 1826, a full 50 years after the Revolutionary War began, they were still using pounds for money. I wonder when the US finally, officially dropped the pound as an acceptable currency. Might need to go look that up.

The other part of the record that interested me was the note included at the bottom. It was apparently written (or at least dictated and approved) by Lucinda's father Benjamin Berry. I love the way the note sounds when read aloud, as it makes me think this is the accent they may have used. The note was apparently written to the minister or government officer responsible for issuing the marriage license, and reads as follows (spelling as written in the original):

Sir,
It is with my apperbation that Mr. Lewis harris weights on you For Licins to Inter marry with My Daughter Lucinda.
Benjamin Berry

I love seeing those little individual quirks in how my ancestors and their associates wrote. Things like "apperbation", "weights" for waits, and "Licins" make me wonder if this is how they sounded when they spoke.

I went back to my file and saw that Benjamin was born about 1755, so he would've been about 71 years old when writing this. 71, with an 18-year-old daughter! She wasn't his youngest either - she had three younger sisters and a younger brother as well. These were all children of Benjamin's second wife, Nancy Blanton, who was about 25 years Benjamin's junior. The handwriting on the note is really clear and smooth so either Benjamin had a very steady hand at 70, or someone wrote it for him. I'm inclined to think he wrote it himself, as Thomas' signature is on the note as well with the note Test, which I take to mean Testator or witness. But for Benjamin the signature is in the same hand as the rest of the note, with no note for "his mark" or the word 'seal' with a squiggly cloud drawn around it, or anything else to indicate that it's a copy of an original note. So this is probably his own signature and handwriting. Wow! His handwriting at 71 is better than mine has ever been.

 

 

Then, just for funsies, I went looking for the marriage record of Benjamin and Nancy, just to see if they had it. They did! This was made a while after the fact, as it looks like it's a summary of marriages performed in Woodford County either by a man named Carter Tarrant, or for a church or court Carter was affiliated with. The marriages are all out of order chronologically, so it might even be a summary of several churches or courts or something. But the amazing thing is this record is over 210 years old, and has information about my family! Simply amazing how much information is available to researchers these days, and how easy it is to find sometimes. 

Why my genealogy is so awesomely hard to trace - part 2

Picking up where I left off, here's a summary of where I'm at with my maternal ancestral lines, and what I want to do from here.

1. Bergstad - Thanks to a Bergstad cousin and the awesome online archives of the Norwegian government, I've got original records taking my Bergstad line back to the 1700s. I could try to push back further, but what I'd really like to do is get copies of the records about the farms they lived on, because that seems to be how things were organized in Norway back then. There are books in the FHL, I know which ones I need, I just need someone to get the copies for me.

2. Fadness - I've got some of the records for my Fadness lines that I have for my Bergstads, but not as many or as complete. I intended to go get them, just got sidetracked and never got back to them. I need to flesh out my record collection from the Norwegian archives for the Fadnesses I know about before going any further back on them. Plus I need to do a little more study on how the Norwegian naming system actually worked. I don't know enough about how the farm name worked, if it was considered part of the person's name or not. In both the Bergstad and Fadness families, they eventually adopted the farm name as their surnames, and there has to be a reason for that.

3. Olson - Another Norwegian line, in about the same situation as the Fadnesses - need to flesh out the documentation, but both in the US and Norway. This is one case where the surname came from a direct ancestor, not a farm.

4. Hammer - My last Norwegian line, slightly better documented in Norway than the Olsons and Fadnesses, but not by much. I do have some really cool homestead documents for the immigrant on this line, Philip Wilhelm Oleson Hammer for his settlement in North Dakota. I think this is another family that took the farm name as the surname. I want to document them better in Norway, and see what I can pull up on the farm records.

5. Krüger - One of my German lines in my mom's ancestry, and one where I have a lot of names and dates and places but no supporting documentation. I really want to research these guys and trace them back to the old country, but haven't because I've thought it would be too tough. Maybe I should test this and see what I can find out?

6. McDonald - My one and only Scottish line. Well, sorta - one line of McDonalds was apparently English, while the other was probably Scottish. The problem is, I'm stuck in Ontario in the mid 1800s, where there were approximately 50,000 George McDonalds/MacDonalds. It's like looking for a single strand (blade? string?) of hay in a field of haystacks. If I could track down a modern descendant and get them to take a DNA test, I might stand a chance of tracing them back to Scotland.

7. Harris - I've got some pretty good documentation on them going back to the late 1700s in America, and then it stops. Although I've always thought I need more solid info on my 4th-great-grandfather, Lewis Harris, tying him to his parents Nathaniel Harris and Mary Howard. That and colonial Virginia research is way beyond me at this point, so I'd really have to bone up before trying to tackle this line.

8. Berry - Lewis Harris married Lucinda Berry, so the time and location for the Berry's is pretty close to that of the Harrises. I've got some good info on Lucinda and her folks, but not much beyond those two generations. Again, this is colonial Virginia and perhaps Maryland, so I haven't really tried to push beyond what I already know about them.

9. Scribner - This is another early American family, where the data I have goes back to England, but I haven't verified it yet. I'm sure there's a lot of good info out there to corroborate it, I just haven't taken time to learn about how to winnow it out of the records yet.

10. Craddock - This is a probable English connection, but I only feel comfortable with my documentation on them going back to about 1830 (and even that's pushing it a bit). It's southern research, so you're dealing with missing/destroyed records much moreso than any other of my lines. I'd like to shore up what I have going back to 1850, and see where I can go from there.

11. Beilstein - I've written pretty extensively about Philena "Lena" Beilstein, probably more than any other single ancestor in my whole tree. Her story is just so fascinating and so tragic. I was recently able to find a little more info about her parents, and the man who married them. I have a lot more info on her ancestry, but not a lot of documentation to support it. I'd like to confirm it if I can and explore the Hessian connection.

Well, that about sums it up. Any recommendations on which line I should research first?