Wedding Bell Clues

Everyone has wedding certificates in their possession.  Working on genealogy, I probably have more than my share.  I have some as current as my own to ones back to the 19th century.  But there are more to wedding records than just wedding certificates.

Marriage bonds--as in money, not the bonds of holy matrimony--were common in some states, particularly in the South, into the 18th century.  They were posted in the county courthouse to help offset any costs of legal action in case the marriage was nullified.  The groom and usually the father or brother of the bride posted a bond; if a woman posted bond, it may have been the bride's mother because the father was deceased.

Licenses eventually replaced bonds in the 19th century.  In some states, however, a license wasn't required for a couple to be married, or the license might be recorded in a different jurisdiction from the marriage.  For those states requiring licenses, sometimes couple took out a license or application but never made it to the altar.

Marriage licenses and certificates from 1890 had little genealogical information.

Marriage license applications in 1944 have a wealth of information.

As you can see, this license gives address, birthplace, occupation, and parent names.  All very helpful with clues to further documentation.  The address directs you to a city directory.  The birthplace directs you to where a birth certificate can be found.  Occupation can lead you to archived business records or directories.  Parent names give you another generation back.

If anyone has marriage records in your possession, I would love to have a copy to document the marriage in our family.

Getting Your Irish Up

I know, I know.  The Loves aren't Irish, they're Scottish.  But I'm sure other lines in your family may have Irish roots.  My great-grandmother Love (Mary Jane Kingston) had Irish roots.  Her father came from Ireland possibly around 1844.  As yet, I haven't researched that line over the pond.  Not even sure, where in Ireland he came from.  This blog entry is more of a informational entry for people with Irish ancestry.

My 2nd great-grandfather was part of a phenomenal wave of Irish migration--one of 7 million to leave the Emerald Isle since the 1600s.  In previous decades, from the 1820s through the Great Famine and into the 1880s, one-third to one-half of all the people starting new lives in America sailed from Ireland.  They came seeking refuge from poverty, hunger and oppression.  They found prejudice and hardship, but also opportunity--and they changed the culture and history of their adopted land.

From President John F. Kennedy to Grace Kelly, John Huston, Eugene O'Neill, social activist Dorothy Day and Sen. Eugene McCarthy, it's an understatement to say the Irish have "arrived" in America.  According to the 1990 census, 40 million Americans identify themselves ethnically as Irish, behind only British (50 million) and German (49 million).

The high points in the exodus were always linked to low points in Irish life--persecution by the British, desperate poverty and, of course, the Great Famine.  In the 17th and 18th centuries, Protestants from Ulster were among the first to leave Ireland for the frontiers of colonial America.  (The British government essentially forbade Catholic emigration until 1827.)  But the hemorrhage of emigration that forever changed Ireland started in the early 1800s.

Between 1780 and 1830, Ireland's population quadrupled, from 2.3 million to 8 million.  Much of the populace lived in extreme poverty, made dramatically worse by such disasters as torrential rains that destroyed potato and grain harvests and outbreaks of smallpox, typhus and cholera.  About 20,000 people left Ireland for North America in 1815 alone; 50,000 others died of disease between 1816 and 1818.  An even larger wave of emigration to North America--400,000 people emigrated to England, mainly to London, Liverpool and Manchester.

Then, between 1845 and 1855, as a completely unknown blight ravaged Ireland's potato crops, one-fourth of the population fled the country and the Great Famine.  About 1.5 million went to the United States, 340,000 to Canada, 300,000 to Great Britain and 70,000 to Australia.  Some 1.5 million in Ireland died of starvation or disease.

Those fortunate enough to escape the desperate situation at home dutifully sent money back to Ireland, hoping to bring other family members across the Atlantic.  The cost of a steerage-class passage to America during the famine years was $5 to $20, a small fortune in those days if you were poor.

You can get in touch with your heritage as simply as reading any of the following books:

44: Dublin Made Me by Peter Sheridan
More Bread or I'll Appear by Emer Martin
The Mammy by Brendan O'Carroll
Tara Road by Maeve Binchy (An Oprah Book Club selection)
Charming Billy by Alice McDermott
Are You Somebody: The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman by Nuala O'Faolain
A Song for Mary: An Irish-American Memory by Dennis Smith
Angela's Ashes: A Memoir by Frank McCourt (A movie made in 1999)

Or, you could make a trip to Boston.  Or Ireland itself.  Unfortunately, Ireland is not a destination I am able to fly while I'm working so it would have to be a planned trip for me.  I have been to Boston many times, although I haven't done research there.  Below is a favorite picture of mine from Boston.

I hope this has wet your appetite to research your Irish Family History.  If you need more resource help, let me know.