Roberts Family (Click for Family Tree)

Getting back to researching a family after many years is exciting, with all the new information available online. Unfortunately, it also shows one’s sloppy research- or shall we more kindly say, ‘uneducated’ research? Many of us started our family history studies when very young, or when genealogy was more casual, and family resources were taken verbatim and sources were not cited well. That is the case this ‘Sorting Saturday’- these two pages of information need a citation!

The pages were kindly received from a cousin in Indiana many, many years ago. Reviewing our emails, there is no indication of the origins of these pages, but we did  also talk on the phone and may have discussed the book that contained these pages. Sadly, I don’t believe I have notes from the phone conversation, and I have been unable to contact her recently.

There is a clue on page 40: “The Descendants of Hester Violet Ligget” in the upper left corner- this may be the name of the book. A Google search did not come up with that title, but a search on Amazon came up with something similar: Ancestors of Hester Violet Liggett, 1904-1979, by Norma Holland, 1998. Unfortunately the book is currently unavailable on Amazon.com.

So WorldCat, where libraries provide their ‘card catalog’ to the online community, was the next stop, now that I had a proper title and author. The book, using “Ancestors” instead of “Descendants” was there, and shown to be in the collections of the Allen County Public Library, the Family History Library in Salt Lake City UT, and at the Kentucky Historical Society in Frankfort, KY. So there is a possibility of getting the book via interlibrary loan (ILL) or contacting one of these groups to see if these pages are in that specific book.

FaceBook is another good place for genealogical help- I did post a query there at the Family History Center’s US-Midwest group as well as their southern group since the family lived in Kentucky before Indiana. One group member’s suggestion was that I contact the Ripley County Historical Society, and that will be another option to learn more about these pages as well as more about the Roberts family.

It is nice to have Cousin Cindy’s penciled-in notes on the pages. She had done a lot of research on the Roberts family in Indiana, and even into Kentucky where Edward Roberts/Robbards married Rosy Stewart before their migration to Ripley County, Indiana. We have no sources for her notes, so need to review and verify each of them. They are great clues to start with, especially since she was the one who found their marriage records in Kentucky!

Two other interesting points to note on this ‘Sorting Saturday’:

• Migration from Kentucky to Indiana may be a clue that a Revolutionary War pension was involved.  As Edward Roberts was born in 1775, he would have been too young to fight in that war, but his father may have served. Land in the then far western state of Kentucky was given to many Revolutionary soldiers. For some reason they then had to move on to Indiana- why this happened will take more research, but another family that married into this line may have experienced this migration as well (the Honts family). We may be able to learn the parents of Edward by using this clue.
• WorldCat includes a short summary on their page for every book. The information about Hester Violet Liggett (1904-1979) notes that she died in Rising Sun, Indiana- and that was where cousin Cindy B. lived per her email signature! Wonder if Cindy knew her, and that was how she (possibly) came to have this book?

So when sorting on a Saturday or any other day, read your clues very carefully, and make sure to look for connections and patterns. Put your ancestors into the context of their times, and research more about those events as needed. Now that we have an idea of where this information came from, while waiting on replies to confirm we can start looking for more information about the Roberts family and their early years.

 

Notes, Sources, and References: 

1. Ancestors of Hester Violet Liggett, 1904-1979, by Norma Holland, 1998–https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=hester+violet+liggett
2. Ancestors of Hester Violet Liggett, 1904-1979, by Norma Holland, 1998. WorldCat entry–http://www.worldcat.org/title/ancestors-of-hester-violet-liggett-1904-1979/oclc/40763894&referer=brief_results

 

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Original content copyright 2013-2017 by Heritage Ramblings Blog and pmm.

Family history is meant to be shared, but the original content of this site may NOT be used for any commercial purposes unless explicit written permission is received from both the blog owner and author. Blogs or websites with ads and/or any income-generating components are included under “commercial purposes,” as are the large genealogy database websites. Sites that republish original HeritageRamblings.net content as their own are in violation of copyright as well, and use of full content is not permitted. 

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Roberts Family (Click for Family Tree)

In the early days of our country, communities policed themselves by making the whole group responsible for keeping everyone legal. Marriage, of course, was one of the most important legal events- paternity and inheritance were very much affected by a marriage, thus there were certain rules for a betrothed couple to follow.

Generally, ‘marriage banns’ were read and/or posted at the church or meeting house each week for three successive weeks. By announcing their intention to marry, the couple was open to community scrutiny. Anyone could come forward and declare some legal reason they should not be married. (“Speak now or forever hold your peace.”) These reasons included that the prospective bride, groom, or both, were either:

a) already married to someone else

b) too young to marry, and/or

c) too closely related, such as first cousins

If a couple planned to be married in a place where one or both were not well known, or if the marriage was to take place quickly, they would provide a marriage bond instead of banns. Since our ancestors Edward Roberts and Rosey Stewart lived out on the frontier of our country (Kentucky in 1800), there might not have been a church or minister nearby to read or publish banns. Marriage bonds were also a southern custom, and common in the mid-Atlantic states as well. (The Roberts family may have lived in the mid-Atlantic states prior to Kentucky, but that’s another post.)

The marriage bond would stipulate that if there was later found some legal reason that the couple should not have been married, the bondsman would pay the Governor of the state an agreed-upon sum of money as a penalty. The groom would sign, and the bride would be represented by a male usually of her family, since women had few legal rights. Her representative was the bondsman, and often her father, but could be another male such as a brother, guardian, uncle, family friend, etc., or even (!) her mother if no other male was available.

Contrary to popular belief today, a marriage bond was NOT a guarantee that a marriage would take place. If the couple did not follow through with the marriage, the bond did not have to be paid at all. It would only be paid after the marriage and only if the union was found to have been illegal, such as the bride being underage.

It is amazing to be able to see this marriage bond that was written 216 years ago! It was signed on 25 February 1800, and Edward and Rosey were married two days later in Clark County, Kentucky. A Charles Stewart signed the bond to represent Rosey, and many researchers (myself included) have thought that meant he was her father. He might be, but he could also have been the only relative she had in Kentucky at that time. So we do need more research to prove her father.

Following is my transcription of the document. Some of the words are hard to make out, so please let us know if you think there should be some changes to the transcription.

Know all men by these presents
that we Edward Robbards & Chas. Steward are held
and firmly bound unto James Garrard, Esq’r Governor
of this commonwealth & his successors in the sum
of Fifty pounds to which payment well & tru-
ly to be made to the Said Governor & his successors we
bind ourselves our heirs Exers [Executors] & AD’mos (Administrators) jointly Severa-
ly firmly by these presents Sealed and Dated this
25th Day of Feby   1800

The Condition of the above
is such that whereas there is a marriage
Shortly intended to be had & Solemized between
the above bound Edwd Robbards & Rosey
Steward if therefore there be no lawful
cause to obstruct the same then this obligation
to be void else to remain in full force

Sealed & Delivered                          Edward Robbards [seal]
in presents [large mark- X]            Charles Steward [seal]

 

Notes, Sources, and References: 

1. An ‘amanuensis’ (ə-măn′yo͞o-ĕn′sĭs) is a person who takes dictation or who copies a literary work. It is Latin for “slave at handwriting.” It is also used for someone who transcribes.
2. Marriage bond from Clark County, Kentucky, possibly county clerk’s office. Received from a cousin many, many years ago.
3. Dodd, Jordan. Kentucky Marriages, 1802-1850 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 1997. Ancestry.com, accessed 04/08/2016.
4. “United States Marriage Records, 3.2 Marriage Bonds”, FamilySearch Wiki,  https://familysearch.org/wiki/en/United_States_Marriage_Records. Accessed 04/08/16
5. “Bonds That Bind: What’s a Marriage Bond – and Why?” by Richard Pence.   http://www.pipeline.com/~richardpence/bonds2.htm. Accessed 04/08/16.
6. “The Ties that Bond” by Judy Russell, The Legal Genealogist, http://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog/2012/01/25/the-ties-that-bond/. Accessed 04/08/16.

 

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We would love to read your thoughts and comments about this post (see form below), and thank you for your time! All comments are moderated, however, due to the high intelligence and persistence of spammers/hackers who really should be putting their smarts to use for the public good instead of spamming our little blog.

 

Original content copyright 2013-2015 by Heritage Ramblings Blog and pmm.

Family history is meant to be shared, but the original content of this site may NOT be used for any commercial purposes unless explicit written permission is received from both the blog owner and author. Blogs or websites with ads and/or any income-generating components are included under “commercial purposes,” as are the large genealogy database websites. Sites that republish original HeritageRamblings.net content as their own are in violation of copyright as well, and use of full content is not permitted.

 

Descendants and researchers MAY download images and posts to share with their families, and use the information on their family trees or in family history books with a small number of reprints. Please make sure to credit and cite the information properly.

 

Please contact us if you have any questions about copyright of our blog material.