The World’s Best Books on Genealogy and Family History

Remarkable Collections of MD & VA Marriages Reduced for Quick Sale

Sale prices in effect through Thursday, July 19, 2018, at 11:59 PM EDT

In previous “Genealogy Pointers” newsletter’s we have discussed the lengths to which some authors have striven for comprehensiveness. For instance, Virginia Wulfeck, in her multi-volume “Marriages of Some Virginia Residences, 1607-1800,” and Charles Hamlin in “They Went Thataway,” and its sequel “Virginia Ancestors and Adventurers,” scoured mountains of records in order to track the movements of settlers into and out of Virginia.

With the exception of Quaker records of removal, migration records, as such, do not exist. As Wulfeck and Hamlin demonstrated, the genealogist must reconstruct the pattern of migration from related sources, such as marriage records, deeds, and so on.

Migration is just one example of how conscientious researchers have compiled records where there appear to have been none. Piecing together the records of an entire county is exactly what Polly Mason faced when she undertook to compile the genealogical records of Gloucester, County, Virginia, nearly 60 years ago. This was a tall order because Gloucester had suffered the loss by fire of all of its court records prior to 1865. Undeterred, Mrs. Mason spent 10 years among the records of neighboring counties, the Virginia State Archives in Richmond, the College of William and Mary, and additional repositories in Virginia, other states, and abroad in order to salvage the genealogical heritage of Gloucester and Mathews counties.

Like his Virginia counterparts, Robert W. Barnes, is no stranger to genealogical thoroughness. For his recent book, Maryland Marriage Evidences, 1634-1718, Mr. Barnes has revisited Maryland’s 17th- and 18th-century sources, and he has come up with a completely fresh collection of marriages from (1) parish registers and other church records and (2) indirect references to marriage from land records, probate and court records, marriage contracts, and Maryland state papers and court reports. Mr. Barnes’s new book is a remarkable piece of genealogical detective work yielding new references to over 6,000 colonial inhabitants.

Maryland Marriage Evidences, 1634-1718 is Mr. Barnes’s Maryland counterpart to his friend and compiler Robert Headley’s 2003 publication, “Married Well and Often: Marriages of the Northern Neck of Virginia, 1649-1800.” As that book’s subtitle states–“Marriages and Marriage References for the Counties of Lancaster, Northumberland, Old Rappahannock, Richmond, and Westmoreland”–the volume encompasses all the licenses and bonds for the aforementioned counties. It ALSO includes every reference to a Northern Neck county marriage that Headley could discover in wills, deeds, order books, and Bibles.

All researchers of colonial Maryland and Virginia alike who know what it means to comb the woods for elusive sources can appreciate achievements like those of Mr. Barnes and Mr. Headley. Click the button to the right for more information about their books and the other examples of genealogical scholarship referred to herein.

Even better, you can make these wonderful books your own for up to 25% below their retail prices until this Thursday, July 19, 2018, at 11:59 PM EDT.