Ancestry Magazine

When you find an original record that was made in advance of the event to which it refers, how much weight should you give such a document as evidence for the event?

You’ll occasionally find an original record, or perhaps an entry in an original record, that was made in advance of the event to which it refers. How much weight should you give such a document as evidence for the event?

Examples are marriage bonds, announcements of marriage intentions) or “banns,”) invitations, place of burial on death certificates, and undated names of spouses on gravestones. These can be described generally as anticipatory records, because they anticipate that the event will take place. Standing alone, they can’t be considered cornerstones that would support a conclusion about the event, but they often suggest strongly that it took place. Combined with indirect evidence, they can provide a convincing circumstantial case as a solid foundation for a conclusion.

Take marriage banns as an example. The purpose of advance announce ment of marriage intentions was to prevent illegal or bigamous marriages by giving the community an opportunity to come forth with information about any circumstances that would prevent a lawful marriage. Most jurisdictions required or encouraged these announcements, and they were usually made shortly before the wedding was to take place. In most cases the wedding followed soon after, but there were always people who changed their minds at the last minute or about whom some irregularity came to light as a result of the announcement. The most serious obstacle, of course, would be discovery of a living spouse, but there were also other circumstances that could prevent a lawful marriage-such as lack of parental consent for underage parties or lack of the master’s consent for an apprentice, indentured servant, or slave. If you find a christening record during the following year that names the same parties as parents, and with no notation indicating that the birth was illegitimate, you have a strong case for the marriage having taken place, probably soon after the date of the banns but at least by the date of the birth. If the birth is specified as legitimate, as is usual in French and German baptismal records, you have even stronger evidence that the marriage took place.

The alternative to announcements of banns in most jurisdictions was a marriage by license; the license authorized the marriage to take place without the advance announcement of intentions. In England, where marriage was regulated by the established church, licenses were issued by diocesan bishops. In the American colonies and early states, they were usually issued by local officials in the name of the governor, but laws and requirements varied from one jurisdiction to another, as do the surviving records. To use them effectively, you need to learn the requirements and procedures in effect at the time in question.

A fee was charged for marriage licenses. The bridegroom also had to sign a bond-a solemn promise to pay the state some specified sum of money, but with the condition that the obligation was void if no obstacle stood in the way of a lawful marriage. To secure the obligation, another person had to sign as surety, guaranteeing payment of the obligation if necessary.

Members of the upper classes often preferred marriage by license, considering it more prestigious. Marriage by license indicated that they could afford the fee and enabled them to avoid being lumped with common folk in the weekly announcements of intended marriages. When people of modest means married by license, time was often a factor. Banns were usually required to be announced at several successive Sabbath-day services, which presented problems in rural churches served by itinerant clergy who did not visit them on a weekly basis.

A marriage license is addressed to the officer who is to officiate at the marriage, and authorizes performance of the marriage ceremony. Today, the license is combined with a certificate and return of marriage, which has to be signed by the parties, the witnesses, and the officiating officer and returned for entry into the vital statistics registers. Early licenses, if they survive at all, are most likely to be found among personal papers of clergy members or miscellaneous church records. Like the license application and the bond, the licenses were prepared in advance of the event. When a license is found among records of a church or minister, however, it is more likely that a ceremony took place than for a license found elsewhere.

The marriage license bonds represented financial assets of the government, and they tend to have been carefully preserved-even when other records relating to the marriage have disappeared. They were usually not executed until immediately before the ceremony was to take place. Like a license found in church records, they are stronger evidence for a marriage than a mere announcement of intentions, but are not conclusive without further support. Th e surety for a bond, like the witnesses at the wedding, often was a close relative of one of the parties, perhaps unknown from other sources. Identifying all members of a family group, not just your direct ancestors, is often an important key to successfully linking generations. The names on marriage bonds sometimes help in this “whole family” approach.

Invitations must be used with care as evidence for an event, although they may be very helpful in providing supplemental information. A poignant example of the need for caution would be the carefully preserved invitation to a shower for an expectant mother that was never held because of a miscarriage. Wedding invitations and announcements, as well as newspaper wedding accounts, may give a post-wedding address for the couple. It usually proves correct but, because it’s an anticipatory record, it needs to be confirmed from a later record.

Death certificates were first used in urban areas in the mid-19thcentury and had a two-fold purpose: they permitted newly organized boards of health to collect and analyze mortality data for public health purposes, and they served as burial permits in an attempt to limit unsanitary and nuisance conditions from overcrowded city churchyard burials. Strictly speaking, in most jurisdictions a cemetery has no legal authority to bury someone if another burial place is indicated on the death certificate. Nevertheless, such situations do occur, and they can be very difficult to resolve. A secondary source, such as a newspaper obituary, may provide a lead to the proper burial place-or may merely repeat the erroneous data on the death certificate. As a first step, all burial locations shown on other family death certificates should be checked for the lost remains.

If the cemetery listed on a death certificate has no record of the burial, it may have been an omission on the cemetery’s part, but this is less likely than some other possibilities. Records of cemete ry associations that are still active tend to be quite accurate since they are essential to the income and operation of the organization. Disasters and epidemics, such as the October 1918 influenza epidemic, which caused the deaths of more than half a million Americans, are the exception. Even in cases such as these, however, cemetery burial records tend to be incomplete rather than missing. Some more likely explanations of such discrepancies might arise from circumstances after the death certificate was filed-discovery that the family’s lot was in a different cemetery, or a family decision to change the burial arrangements. At best, the burial site designated on the death certificate should be considered only a guide that might lead to more definitive evidence.

Of all the anticipatory records, perhaps the most unreliable is the name of a spouse on a gravestone without a date of death. Both names are sometimes engraved when the stone is installed after the burial of the first spouse, with a space left for the date of death of the second. The second spouse may still be living, even if an advanced age is indicated by the birth year. Any of several other possibilities, however, are equally likely. The second spouse may already be buried in the plot, but the stone was never updated; the second spouse may have remarried, changed her name, and be buried with new spouse elsewhere, or the named spouse may have died at a distant location and the remains never returned to the cemetery being studied. No sound conclusion is possible without further information.

Since secondary and compiled sources can also be anticipatory, be careful in drawing conclusions from them. School yearbooks, for example, are produced in advance of graduation and don’t prove completion of the course of study. They do, however, identify the school attended, which will have records of degrees or graduation. Many schools also maintain records about their graduates or publish alumni/alumnae directories. These ca n be very useful in identifying married names of women for whom only birth names are known.

Records created before the fact can be very useful, but their usefulness depends upon a full appreciation of their limitations.

Donn Devine is a practicing attorney and the archivist for the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington. He is active in local and national genealogical organizations.