Nancy Upshaw wrote the below excellent explaination for marriage records and with her permission, I am passing it along to everyone. Chocy, I cannot post to the Fauquier list, for some reason. But, I do still receive the digests, and I saw your question about what the marriage bonds are, vs. minister returns, etc. A marriage BOND is simply a promise - by both parties, but primarily the man, to marry each other in the near future. IT DOES NOT MEAN THE MARRIAGE HAPPENED. It is sort of like a license, which without being finalized is not a legal document. It also can take the place of Marriage BANNS, which were used by the early churches prior to the marriage bonds of the county. After awhile, the (church) banns were replaced by the (civil) bonds, especially after the Rev War, as the church no longer had civil authority. Quakers continued to use their own procedures for announcing upcoming marriages and conducting them, since they did not recognize the civil authority over marriages. Usually the marriage did happen, and WITH OTHER EVIDENCE the bond can be used as an estimate of the date of marriage. However, if it is suspected that the marriage did not take place, you should check the court records for the time period to see if a complaint was brought by either party for breach of promise. I have occasionally seen these, but not often. The date of the marriage bond will *precede* the actual marriage date by at least one or two days, sometimes a week or more. Once the marriage is performed, then the minister may (or may not) have RETURNED to the county clerk a list of marriages he performed since he turned his last list in. This is what is meant by a minister's marriage RETURN. These returns often no longer exist, but where they do, are an actual proof that the marriage did take place, where a marriage bond is *not*. John Gott's book of Fauquier marriages tries to tie the bonds and returns together, if there are both documents for a couple. In many cases only one or the other exist but not both. In a few cases there are even corrections to documents for bad names on the first documents and so several records with different dates are sometimes created for the same two people. (Example: Evan Phillips and Lucinda Stinson/Stevenson). I caution everyone to order actual copies of the records, since I have found family information on them that John Gott failed to duplicate for the book. The county "marriage books" as kept today in the courthouse are records of the validated licenses (the equivalent of marriage RETURNS), after a certain date (required by law, but not actually done usually until later on). Marriage licenses are not legal proof of marriage until they are validated by the person of authority conducting the ceremony and returned by him/her to the county. I hope this helps. - Nancy Upshaw ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.