Sign up for Genealogy Pointers »

This work contains a list of 7,000 marriages and boasts an additional 16,000 index entries. It contains all marriage references--including licenses, bonds, mentions in wills, deeds, order books, and Bible records--that the author could locate in both published and unpublished sources, and because it is so well sourced it offers far more than a simple list of marriages.

Starting with marriage license bonds for Northumberland County (1783-1800), Westmoreland County (1772-1800), Richmond County (1750-1800), and Lancaster County (1701-1800), the author added marriages from scattered licenses, fee books, ministers' returns, family bibles, and notes in various volumes of court records, finalizing his research in the will books and deed books for Northumberland, Lancaster, Westmoreland, Old Rappahannock, and Richmond counties, as well as in standard publications.

The result is a work with many unusual features. Besides the names of husband and wife and the date of marriage, entries may contain the names of parents, grandparents, former spouses, children of previous marriages, and other relations, as well as names of persons connected with the marriage such as securities for the groom, guardians, and clergymen. In addition, parent and children relationships are spelled out, as are sibling relationships, and there is a wealth of incidental detail concerning illigitimate children, places of birth and residence, putative marriages, dates of death of one or more parents, exact spellings of names, and precise dates of marriage.

If you have even a glimmer of interest in the Northern Neck of Virginia, this exhaustive work is bound to satisfy you.