The Act which authorized the issuance of marriage licenses or bonds in North Carolina was passed in 1741 and it remained the law until 1868, when the present form of marrige license was authorized. A second form of marriage allowed in North Carolina by the 1741 law was a marriage by "banns", for which no records were kept. Since marriage by "bann" was more convient and less expensive, it is probable that most of the marriages took place by that method, which lessens the chance of finding records which may have been preserved. Carol Pridgen Martoccia 903 East Fifth St. Greenville, NC 27858 PRIDGEN Homepage : http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Meadows/6297 PRIDGEN Archives: http://searches.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/listsearch.pl List manager for the Pridgen Family and for Wilson County, NC (NCWilson) --------- End forwarded message ---------- ___________________________________________________________________ You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail. Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com/getjuno.html or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]