I've tried to send this for two days, but it keeps rejecting. Alice says the list is working, so I'm trying again. Frank It's time to wake up this list. We've been too quiet lately. Several months ago I posted a message regarding Sarah Bates of Bellingham and an intention of marriage in 1797 to Benjamin Hall of Cumberland RI. In a response, it was noted that Sarah was listed in the transcribed records as "Mrs" indicating she was a widow. Several messages went back and forth on the subject of so many apparent widows in Bellingham remarrying. I was never comfortable with the idea that so many of the women marrying in Bellingham in the latter half of the 18th century were widows. In April I had to go to Rhode Island for a funeral so I took a day to meet list Mom Alice in Mendon and we went over to Bellingham to talk to the town clerks. Initially we were only shown the transcribed records that are available to anyone. When we explained the concern in detail, we were given the extraordinary opportunity to review the actual records. The original records do show "Mrs" for all the brides in many of the entries, although the entry is shown as a capital M with a small r and s written in what we would call superscript today. All the entries for the grooms showed "Mr" with a capital M and a small r, also written as superscript. This still bothered me so I started randomly checking records and finally found when this form of recording began. The last entry without the "Mr" and "Mrs" was on March 30, 1754; it was an intention of marriage for Daniel Chapin of Mendon and Abigail Corbett of Bellingham. The next entry is on April 5, 1754 and is in a different handwriting. Suddenly, the method of showing people's name changes. That first entry is an intention of marriage for Mr. Josiah Nelson of Mendon and Mrs. Elizabeth Mayer of Bellingham. The town clerk told us the office of town clerk used to change hands on the first of April each year, if it changed at all. She said it is common to find a change of handwriting between March and April. The practice of using Mr and Mrs for intentions of marriage appears to last for about sixty years. After that, the records are in poor condition and I could not follow the pattern. After arriving home I researched the use of Mr and Mrs. Most researchers agree that Mrs was a contraction for Mistress from early colonial times until the early to middle part of the 1800s. It is also generally agreed that Mistress was used to refer to any woman over the age of 16 regardless of her marital status. The use of mistress to refer to a woman, married or single, disappeared completely by the Victorian era. I think we can safely assume that the small town of Bellingham did not have dozens of widows who married again during a sixty year period, especially since earlier marriages can't be found for the vast majority of these women. So, I think we can assume that after a change of town clerk in April of 1754 the new clerk referred to all women being married as Mrs and that he used Mrs as a contraction for Mistress. There may be some exceptions, but I think we can safely assume that most of the women marrying between 1754 and about 1800 in Bellingham were not widows. I'm open to other suggestions, though. Frank Comstock