Concerning early marriage records from practically any State, not just Virginia. If all State Libraries were as cooperative as the Library of Virginia in making copies of actual marriage bonds or records, that would be wonderful. A lesson I learned: When I first began genealogy, I was fortunate enough to have enough leisure to take some beginning classes sponsored by a local genealogical society. One of the instructions: Gather all the marriage records, birth records, death certificates/obituaries for your direct ancestors as possible. (This instruction saved me a LOT of work when I decided to join DAR--because I already had these documents for evidence of my direct lineage.) At any rate, one of my great-grandfathers, who lived ca 1816 in one of the Feliciana Parishes, Louisiana, had married across the State line, Mississippi, to a sister of his sister-in-law [all families originally of South Carolina and perhaps before that, who knows where?] I ordered from the Mississippi courthouse an uncertified marriage record of this couple. It came on a 20th century form--with the crossed out dates. Years later, now having some leisure in my life, I ordered film for that particular Mississippi county to my local Family History Center, . Among the documents I found on microfilm was the original marriage bond--with a good deal more information that the paid-for from the courthouse copy which I had received earlier. For example, the bondsman was soon to be another member of this rather large family!!! If you have some leisure in your life and are near a Family History Center, I highly recommend ordering whatever microfilms may be available for your PLACE [State, county, city], probably from Salt Lake City. Marriage records are cataloged in the FHL catalog [www.familysearch.org - go to the right side of the opening screen and do a PLACE search] under the topic Vital Records. Remember that phrase--Vital records. [This is principally for the United States. If searching English records, look under Civil Registration and also Parish Records, depending on the time.]. E.W.Wallace learning something new almost every day - genealogically speaking, that is!! ************************************** Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL at http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour

Mr. Faulkner paid due praise to the state of Virginia over the years, and rightfully so. So many of us native Mississippians had our roots there, both white as well as "black." F. Wilson Hess