I don't find their marriage in Surry, but they may have been married by baan thru the church or were common law. They are in Surry in 1850 census, Fisher River district (all born in NC): William, age 32, Blacksmith Mary, age 28 James, age 8 John, age 6 Nathaniel, age 3 Julia, age 1 William WILLIAMSON, age 12 George EDMOND, age 10 Record shows they appear to have lived with Oliver BRAY and his wife Mary. Bob Carter Greensboro, NC ----- Original Message ----- From: "Listpig" <listpig@earthlink.net> To: <NCSURRY-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Monday, May 08, 2006 11:46 PM Subject: [NCSurry] Holyfield/Butcher > Looking for information on William Butcher and Mary Holyfield, who left > Surry County for Polk County, Missouri somewhere between 1850 and 1860. > > Mary appears to be the daughter of Watson Holyfield; her brother Lewis V. > Holyfield seems to have gone to Polk County at the same time. > > Interested in learning more about the Holyfields. Also interested in > anyone > having any information on their marriage; I've never been able to find a > marriage record for William and Mary. It should be somewhere around 1835, > and they should have been in Surry County at the time, but it's not in the > Marriages of Surry County book. > > William b 4 May 1818 in Surry Co., d. 24 Nov 1888 Polk Co., MO; son of > James > Butcher and Elizabeth Freeman. > > Mary b 3 May 1822 and d. somewhere between 1900-1910 censuses, Polk Co., > MO; > daughter of Watson Holyfield and Margaret Venable. > > (I've seen Mary's tombstone, it simply has no dates on it.) > > --pig > > > > ==== NCSURRY Mailing List ==== > Surry Co, North Carolina NCGenWeb > http://www.geocities.com/~surryco/ > > ============================== > Search the US Census Collection. Over 140 million records added in the > last 12 months. Largest online collection in the world. Learn more: > http://www.ancestry.com/s13965/rd.ashx >

Right, Mrs. Mary Bray is William's sister. To the best of my knowledge, they were Baptist, and I don't think Baptists did banns, but I could be wrong. I notice that the Surry Marriage book lists the couple and the bondsman, nothing else, which is different from what I'm used to in more western states. Does this mean that the listings are actually licenses rather than marriages? What I'm used to is having the preacher/JP/what have you who performed the ceremony listed, and occasionally a marriage would either not get listed or get listed with less than enough/less than correct information, because it was up to the person who performed the ceremony to come back to the county and register it after the fact, and sometimes they forgot, or relied on memory for detail and memory failed them. --pig On 5/9/06 18:46, "Bob Carter" <gravehunter@triad.rr.com> wrote: > I don't find their marriage in Surry, but they may have been married by baan > thru the church or were common law.