Thought y'all would be interested in this posting from Burlington County List in regards to New Jersey Marriages beginning to be put on-line thanks to this person below and she will continue to post additional marriages. WONDERFUL NEWS! Take a look and make a bookmark or favorite. Carol Holt Middle Tennessee Date: Thu, 15 Jul 1999 17:34:35 -0500 (CDT) From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Subject: Early NJ Marriage Bonds I have been extracting the marriage bonds from FHLC #0888701-0888710 these are marriage bonds that were kept in the NJ Dept. of Education, Division of State Library Archives and History; filmed in 1966. They are arranged in groups by [groom's] surname, but chronologically within groups. I have completed Vol. A (290 bonds) and thru #400 of Vol. B (873 bonds). These are being posted at the NJ GenWeb site under "marriage records". The time frame is generally 1735-1767, though the last two films do have some marriage records into the early 1800s. I haven't gotten to those yet, I'm still working on the FIRST film! The address is as follows: <http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/nj/njmarriage.htm> I have had a lot of questions about the format of the bonds, so I'm posting a "blank" form. Most of the bonds were filled out on such pre-printed forms, though there are several that were completely hand-written. Know all Men by these Presents, That _______________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________ holden and do stand justly indebted unto ___________________________ ____________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________ __________________________ in the Sum of Five Hundred Pounds, of current lawful Money of New-Jersey; to be paid to his said _______________________________________________________________ his Successors or Assigns: For the which Payment well and truly to be made and done, _______ do bind _______ sel____ _____________ Heirs, Executors and Administrators,and every of them ________________________________ firmly by these Presents. Sealed with _____________ Seals: Dated this _________________________ Day of _________________________ Annoque Domini One Thousand Seven Hundred and ___________________________________________________ The Condition of this Obligation is such; That whereas the above-bounden _____________________________________ ___________ hath obtained License of Marriage for __________________ ______________________ of the one Party, and for ___________________ ______________________________________________ of the other Party. Now, if it shall not hereafter appear, that they the said __________ ___________________________________________________ have any lawful Let or Impediment, of Pre-contract, Affinity or Consanguinity, to hinder their being joined in the Holy Bands of Matrimony, and afterwards their living together as Man and Wife; then this Obigation to be void, or else to stand and remain in full Force and Virtue. Sealed and Delivered in signature(s) of the the Presence of bondsman/men [signature(s) of one or two witnesses] On the pre-printed part of the form, the lower-case "s", except at the END of a word, is printed to look like a lower case "f" without the part of the cross bar that is under the curved part of the "f". Usually the bondsmen are the groom and one other individual, sometimes related to the bride (at least sometimes has the same surname as the bride). Frequently the spelling of the surnames of the bondsmen differs in the body of the bond than the spelling in the signatures. It is evident that the bondsmen are not the ones that filled in all of the information on the bond! I can't do "look-ups" because that would prevent me from getting this done in a "timely" manner. So I started at the very beginning and am posting them in batches of 50. I hope this helps answer some of the questions. Pat B