I have found a few marriages in Goochland & other counties by reading court
order books (estate records) and deed books (deeds of gift). In cases where
the Rev. Douglas did not record a marriage or the bride's father did not
mention her in his will, this is a time consuming way of trying to indentify
the bride & does not always yield results. Worth trying though in most
counties with those records available.
Bonnie
----- Original Message -----
From: "Eric Grundset" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, February 04, 2010 5:24 PM
Subject: Re: [VA-ROOTS] Albemarle County Formation
> There are extremely few marriage records for Albemarle County prior to
> 1780. At some point prior to the Revolution, there was apparently a
> courthouse
> fire, and some early records were lost. In addition, during the Revolution
> when Tarleton headed to Charlottesville in an attempt to capture Thomas
> Jefferson, the surviving records in the courthouse were evacuated. There
> is a
> list that shows what was saved from the British in that evacuation, and
> the
> list matches almost exactly the surviving court record books for the
> period 1745-1781 that we still have today. Marriage records are not in
> the list,
> so either they were already destroyed earlier or were left behind for the
> sake of saving the major record books. I'm working on a small article on
> this very topic because one of my ancestors in Albemarle was a deputy
> sheriff
> during the Tarleton Raid and the list is in a surviving record book that
> he kept.
>
> It is extremely unlikely that many Albemarle marriages would be recorded
> in
> another county after 1745 unless the couple requested it for some reason
> or for some other special reason. Marriages were usually recorded in the
> county of residence (we've often heard residence of the bride, but I
> wonder
> about that some times). Just because Albemarle was formed from Goochland
> doesn't mean anything for subsequent record keeping for Albemarle
> residents
> unless a couple "went home" to one of their families to be married.
>
> Searching neighboring counties is, of course, always a thing to do, but
> marriages would not automatically be recorded in them. I'm afraid there
> just
> isn't any hope of finding many pre-1780 Albemarle County records.
>
> Eric Grundset
> Burke, Virginia
>
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