If your grandparents, Samuel Byrd & Harriet Clayton, were in northern Louisiana, it was convienient to come over to Union Co.,AR. In those days Union Co.,AR was one of the largest counties in ARK & El Dorado was growing. In 1854, it was probably easier to get married there, than travel south to New Orleans or Baton Rouge & in those days, Monroe & Shreveport were small towns. There were several Byrds in the El Dorado area....so it is very possible they had kin there. Some folks sorta moved back & forth from Union Co. to Louisiana. There was also a big land patent office on the Ouachita River at Champagnolle, outside the town of El Dorado. The main info for a marriage in 1854 was handwritten in a ledger/sometimes in a deed book. If you are lucky it will give the Groom & Bride's age, but now & then some folks who were of age chose not to give it. It will tell you who married them & sometimes if one was underage, it will mention consent given by parents & how. Sometimes there are witnesses. I have boo koodles of kin who married in Union Co. & I have copies of the originals made in the 1840's & 1850's.....usually they are about a paragraph in size. The court clerk used some little squiggly sign as his special mark at the end of each one & then there are one or two lines space between marriages. Later marriages, sometimes, mentioned where the groom/bride were from, such as LA or the county or the township. If the bride has been married before it will usually list her as Mrs. Ann Smith, for example. Hope this helped answer your question. They do have marriage books that have been extracted from the Union Co., records, but some of the little details you are curious about, probably won't be there. You can write the ARK History Commission in Little Rock, giving them the info you have, pay a fee, & request a copy of the original marriage license. Janice