Forwarding this for Judy . . . the message got caught in the list filter as html. Please reply directly to Judy regarding this message (frostfreedet@aol.com). -------------------------------- Betty wrote >>Jonathan Milman 1781-1868 . . . married Sally Evans (c 1790-1872) in Sussex County in 1836 ... according to the ancestry.com list of Delaware marriages 1765-1899. (Could not find any other marriages for Jonathan Milman.). . . . So, if Jonathan and Sally were married in 1836, Elizabeth & Robert would be their children...who is the mother of the other children? OR is the date incorrect (maybe 1806)?<< Betty, you have come across one of the major problems with some kinds of databases, especially as rendered by Ancestry.com. The so-called "Delaware Marriages 1765-1899" is a subcontractor's rendition of extracts from the genealogical card file in the Delaware Public Archive in Dover. This card file was compiled from someone's conclusions about marriages as indicated by some wills, deeds, and even some actual Marriage Bonds, as well as the odd item donated to the Archive by more contemporary individuals. The card file entries show what the source document was, but the subcontractor's extract omits every source reference. In most cases the subcontractor did include the date of the source document, most often reduced to simply a year. In many instances the computer conversion added "January 1" where a month and day were not specified, so there are a large number of plausible-looking New Year's Day marriages in this database. Ancestry just recently added images from actual marriage-related records held by the DE Archive. In the 18th and 19th century DE did not require recording of marriages. Many were married by public announcement or publication of banns. Some were married by Marriage License, in which case the groom and the bride's representative would file a Marriage Bond, asserting that there was no impediment to the marriage to be had, with a money penalty if there turned out to be such an impediment (such as pregnancy or prior marriage without divorce or widowhood). The DE Archive's marriage-related records do not have an entry for a marriage between Jonathan and Sally that I could find (as very badly indexed in the Ancestry installation). Therefore I would tentatively conclude that such a marriage was suggested by a will by Sally's mother or father or other relative, or a deed where they sell their share of Sally's parents' estate. It seems likely that the 1836 date would be the year such document was written or recorded. You can only find out by going to the actual card file and looking up whatever reference is given there. The database you looked at is erroneously described by Ancestry - in most instances it is not derived from an actual marriage record - and since we think Ancestry has no reason to *lie*, you drew a logical conclusion. The fault is in the database, the way it was constructed and the way it is described. In the actual marriage-related records, there are entries for a couple of other Marriage Bonds or Marriage Records for a Jonathan Milrnan, the earliest involving a "Jr." in 1839, the next in 1857 and 1862. Warning to all concerning the records-image database ("Delaware Marriages 1744-1912"): a great many of the marriages recorded ca. 1900-1903 are indexed by Ancestry as occurring 1800-1803. In many cases for the same couple there is a Marriage Bond recorded in, say, 1900 and a Marriage Record that Ancestry indexes as occuring 100 years earlier. Ancestry has been notified of this problem. Given their record of making corrections thus far, in my personal experience, it may be years before they fix this (if ever). Good hunting, Judy