RLP 234: Identifying a Louisiana Marriage Bondsman

Nicole (0s):
This is Research Like A Pro. episode 234 Louisiana Marriage Bond Welcome to Research Like a Pro a genealogy podcast about taking your research to the next level. Hosted by Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder accredited Genealogist professional Diana and Nicole are the mother daughter team@familylocket.com and the authors of research Like a Pro, a Genealogist Guide with Robin Wirthlin. They also co-authored the Companion Volume research like a Pro with DNA, Join, Diana and Nicole as they discuss how to stay organized, make progress in their research and solve difficult cases. Let’s go.

Nicole (43s):
Hello and happy New Year everyone Welcome to Research like a Pro

Diana (47s):
Hi Nicole. How are you doing today?

Nicole (49s):
Hi mom? I’m doing great. Happy New Year.

Diana (53s):
Well Thank you, it’s always fun to look ahead to a new year. When I was little I never thought we’d ever be here 2023. That’s so crazy.

Nicole (1m 3s):
I remember thinking that too as a young person that it’s hard to imagine like anything other than the 1990s,

Diana (1m 11s):
Which now is sounding so long ago

Nicole (1m 13s):
When my kids go to like events at school and they have like the decades theme for Spirit Week. They’re like the 1990s. One

Diana (1m 21s):
Of you’re a life mom in the 1990s.

Nicole (1m 25s):
It’s a dress up.

Diana (1m 27s):
Yeah, well imagine me being alive in the 1960s and seventies. Wow.

Nicole (1m 32s):
Yeah, you’re an old person.

Diana (1m 36s):
So fun.

Nicole (1m 37s):
Well what do you have for your goals for the new year?

Diana (1m 40s):
Well this year I am working on submitting an article to the National Genealogical Society quarterly and I’ve been wanting to do that for a while, but I’m actually getting closer to that, getting a draft put together to submit. I’m using some research that I did years and years and years ago and wrote up in the accreditation form for my fourth generation project for a portion of that. And so now I’m just turning that more into a case study that’s appropriate for that journal. So that’s my goal.

Nicole (2m 13s):
Great goal. And how are you gonna be accountable to get it done?

Diana (2m 16s):
I have accountability partner and every month we meet and we have an assignment each month and we’re reviewing each other’s work and you know, often it’s the day before our meeting that I’m getting my assignment done but I have to have deadlines and a partner’s. Great.

Nicole (2m 30s):
Yay.

Diana (2m 31s):
So How about you, what is your goal for the

Nicole (2m 33s):
Year? Well as you all know, I’ve been working on my portfolio for certification and so I went on the clock in May at NGS of 2022 so I could, you know, try and submit it by May of 2023. I hope I can do that. I’m working toward it. I’m also gonna be totally fine to renew if I need to, but I hope that I can submit my portfolio this year. I think 2023 could be the year I’m feeling a lot closer. So I’ve got all my work samples chosen, I’ve made progress on them and I have an accountability group that meets, you know, at least once a month, sometimes twice a month. And I’ve got a couple different accountability friends that check up on me and see how I’m doing, which is always really helpful and encouraging.

Diana (3m 14s):
I agree. Accountability people are good, I need them. That’s gonna be so exciting when you get that portfolio turned in. So here’s the 2023 and we hope everybody listening is going to have a wonderful year and that you all have a really good goal to work towards in your family history work. Well for our announcements we’re getting excited to start the next research, like a Pro DNA study group that is coming up so quickly on February 1st and that goes till May 10th for 2023. Registration is open, it’s still a few spots available and I sometimes you need to get through the holidays and try to decide if you have the time or the energy to commit to something like this.

Diana (4m 1s):
So maybe it’s the perfect time for you to think about it and decide to join us. Join our newsletter for coupons and we’re also excited about our new research Like a Pro webinar series for 2023. We will be having a monthly webinar live and we would invite you to join us. We’ll be recording those and we’ll have a library set up on family locket for all the recordings. And we are also looking for people who would like to present, you know, Nicole and I will be kicking it off with presentations about our case studies, how we’ve used the research psycho a Pro process and we are looking for other people who would like to share these presentations will be with DNA or without dna.

Diana (4m 42s):
you know, not every project starts with DNA and we’ll be presenting some of those as well. So if you’re interested in purchasing a subscription to that webinar series, the information is on our website and if you’d like to present a webinar that’s also detailed on our website also we’ve got Roots coming up just a few weeks away and you can register for that. There will be an online free version as well as in person, but we will be in person and we’ll have a booth there. We’d love to see you there.

Nicole (5m 13s):
Yeah, I hope we will see a lot of you there. Well I’m excited for our webinar series this year. I just think it’s gonna be fun to hear from people about their projects and their case studies and I’m excited to share my case study which will be about Daniel Arnold and his father and figuring out his parents. And that one includes autosomal DNA N and why D N A, but ultimately auto autosomal DNA n is what helped us figure things out and and a couple interesting records for him and the area where he got married. That’s gonna be an interesting case study to present. I’m excited

Diana (5m 45s):
It’s fun to do an actual presentation with visuals and then to be able to talk through it. It’s one thing to listen to a case study but it’s so helpful to see the records and that combination of vigil and hearing is always so helpful.

Nicole (5m 59s):
Right on the podcast we’ve talked about our cases a lot and it’s a little more informal. I’m excited to put it into a formal lecture format where there’s images and you can see the records And, it kind of forces us as we present it to put it in like we’re presenting it as a a written proof argument almost like here’s all of the evidence that I had found. Right? But actually we will be going through the steps of the research Like a Pro process so you’ll actually be able to see the process and see how we conducted our research. So you’re kind of getting both, you’re getting all the evidence for the case but you’re seeing the steps for the research Like a Pro process.

Diana (6m 36s):
Right. Which is really important because I think, you know, so often with case studies we we watch them, we hear them, we read about them, we go wow that is so cool. But then you don’t see all the things that went into doing the research. So that’s what we’re hoping to kind of show that process. Well what are we talking about today?

Nicole (6m 55s):
Today we’re going to talk about an example of a marriage bond that included a Bondsman that when researching the Bondsman I found out an interesting connection to the bride whose family was unknown. So I was actually just looking through different marriage bond collections. It was part of my research for the article I wrote on family locket about marriage Bonds and I did find some marriage Bonds for the Orleans Parish in New Orleans. So I was just browsing through those and I was looking at each Bondsman and seeing how many of them had the same surname as the bride so that they could easily be identified as like the bride’s father or brother cuz that’s usually who it is. But most of them were not. The Bonds men’s surnames didn’t always match.

Nicole (7m 36s):
And so I thought that was really interesting and I decided to research one of them and see if I could figure out who was this Bondsman and how he was related to either the bride or the groom or if he was just a friend or like an employer of the groom or something like that or a neighbor. So I was kind of thinking like what can I find? And so I’m excited to share kind of what I found today. So first we’ll talk about some of the marriage Bonds in this record set and then the last one we talk about, we’ll talk about how I researched it.

Diana (8m 4s):
Well great, I think it’s kind of fun to do a random research project and I know when I was doing accreditation we had to do, you know, that three hour project, now it’s four hours where you’re just given a little case and then you have to research it for that many hours. And so that’s kind of what you did you, you made up your own little case and had to research it for a bit. So it can be really fun just to research something besides your family and see what you can find.

Nicole (8m 30s):
Yes, absolutely. So who

Diana (8m 32s):
Would’ve thought,

Nicole (8m 33s):
Yeah, I think everyone should try it. Especially if you’re practicing for accreditation or certification or just wanting to get experience for professional work.

Diana (8m 42s):
Right, exactly. Well this example from the Parish of Orleans in the state of Louisiana they had a set of printed marriage record books and for 1860 they had the, the pre-printed forms for a parent to provide consent, the groomsmen’s bond and the marriage license. And in the last episode we were looking at some of the colonial Bonds from North Carolina and Virginia and some other states and they were very long and wordy and full of a lot of boiler plate language. But these are much more simple. So I think that is an interesting change.

Nicole (9m 21s):
Right, yeah I think over time they just decided everyone knows what these are for, we’re just gonna quickly get them, you know, especially since they were preserving all of those different things cuz they had forums for the parents’ consent, the wins bond and the marriage license And, it took up two pages in the book for each marriage. So it was a lot. But in the Family search catalog, the title of this collection is Orleans Parish Louisiana Marriage Licenses and Certificates 1834 to 1888 And. it had several sets of images from various justices from your locality research in Louisiana. Do you remember how this was all set up? I feel like these justices are different areas within the Parish and so comparatively a Parish in Louisiana is the same as a county in other states, right?

Diana (10m 8s):
Yes. The Parish is equivalent to a county in other states and Louisiana was different from a lot of the British colonies, you know, that did the common law. Louisiana has the civil law which continues and so they also use notaries so they have some different terminology for things. So it’s, it’s a little bit different.

Nicole (10m 31s):
Yeah. So I think the different justices were like different areas within the Parish and so they have the first and the second justice and one said and they have like the seventh and eighth justice and they have different time periods for all these marriage records. So the one that I chose was the seventh justice of the piece in the 1860s. and I was just kind of browsing through that book. And so one of the first marriage licenses and Bonds that I found was for Lewis Retch and Kunda Dashner and they obtained a marriage license on May 19th, 1860 in Orleans Parish. And as part of the process, John Dashner provided permission for his 18 year old daughter Ku Guna to be married.

Nicole (11m 15s):
And Louis Retch entered into a marriage bond with the seventh justice of the peace for the Parish of Orleans with a security John Dashner. So it’s the same John Dashner who already provided consent for his daughter to be married. So the Bondsman was the bride’s father. And what’s interesting to me here is that they didn’t use the word surety that they’re normally using, they use the word security and they spelled it wrong. So they spelled it S E C U R E T Y in the pre-printed form.

Diana (11m 49s):
And

Nicole (11m 50s):
And then another funny thing about that is that in the North Carolina research book it says that the Bondsman is also known as assurity and sometimes incorrectly called a security. And so when I saw it preprinted in these Louisiana forms, I was like oh, I wonder if that was just a difference in Louisiana or if that was a mistake or a combination of the word charity and security. Dunno.

Diana (12m 15s):
That is so funny. Yeah. Often you see these little anomalies and you just wonder where they started.

Nicole (12m 21s):
I guess it’s probably just the word security and the spelling back then was not standardized. So in that bond it said now the conditions of the above obligation is such that in case within two years from the state it should not appear that there existed at the time of granting such license, any legal impediment to said marriage then. And in such case the above obligation shall be null and void or else it shall remain in full force and virtue. So basically saying that this marriage bond, we are just making sure that this is a legal marriage and if two years later it seems that it was not a legal marriage, then the people who are under bond have to

Diana (12m 60s):
Pay. So in this case the Bondsman was the father of the bride, is that correct?

Nicole (13m 6s):
Absolutely And. it was pretty clear because he was also on another one of those preprinted forms on the page facing it as the father providing consent. However, most other Bondsmen in this record set did not have the same surname as the bride.

Diana (13m 21s):
So then you have to do some research to figure out who these people are and how they are connected, which is always fun. and I, just wanna note that on family search these are really nice images and they take up two pages, like you said, you know the whole page on the left and the whole page on the right is all for this one marriage.

Nicole (13m 42s):
And sometimes they had loose papers that were inserted too. I noticed that on some of them. I think one of them was talking about the, it was like a certificate from the minister, just a note basically certifying that he did the marriage

Diana (13m 55s):
And I think this was probably a Catholic marriage because it was licenses granted to the reverend is is the printed form but then written out as father a lavender or something. So it sounds like possibly it was Catholic.

Nicole (14m 8s):
That’s a good point that you can take that clue and go figure out which church based on the father or the priest or the pastor or whatever the reverend.

Diana (14m 16s):
And then there would likely be a church record that would go with this because the parishes there did keep good records and you’d have to contact the archive and find those. But sometimes those church marriages then will actually list the parents another avenue of research. So on the next page of the marriage record we have a Joseph Parker entering into a marriage bond with Edward Sweeney as the security and the bride was Bridget Kelly.

Nicole (14m 42s):
That one I didn’t end up researching. I did a couple searches but then I couldn’t figure out who was who because there were a lot of different Joseph Parkers. So I went on to the next and I found a marriage between Jacob Meyer and Sophia Schlessinger and they were intending to marry each other and Daniel Wilson was the Bondsman. So once again we have surname of the Bondsman, not Matching the bride surname or the groom surname. So I was wondering, you know, maybe I could research this couple to find out who their Bondsman was and since the names were a little more different with Schlessinger and I thought it would work.

Nicole (15m 25s):
And then I actually did a, a search of the 1860 census to just see how many Daniel Wilsons there were in the Parish and there was only one, so I was like okay, I can figure this out now. But I did wanna note that on this page of the marriage bond there was a note inserted in the record book from Pastor c Adams certifying that he performed the marriage.

Diana (15m 48s):
Yeah, that’s so neat to see that little insert.

Nicole (15m 51s):
Right. And then it’s kind of cool because it’s like the original handwriting of the pastor and Jacob and Sophia the couple signed the the certificate, you know like okay we got married, we’re gonna sign this piece of paper and the marriage witnesses signed and one of them was Daniel Wilson. So not only was he the Bondsman, he witnessed the marriage and there were two other people who witnessed the marriage gay org Spak and Jacob Kik. And so the names kind of sound German to me.

Diana (16m 19s):
Yeah, absolutely. And if you go back to the image before that one that has the loose paper, it has the page that was covered up by the loose paper, they took a picture of that cuz I was looking at that and thinking, well what’s underneath the paper? There’s obviously something underneath, do we, is that a mystery or can we see that? and they were really good photographers.

Nicole (16m 40s):
Yes, good job photographers, camera operator, they did it

Diana (16m 44s):
And but it does say Sophie lesser a native of Germany right there. So it does say that she was German so

Nicole (16m 53s):
Right. Yes. I think that was on the consent. Was that on the consent form that it said she was a native of Germany?

Diana (16m 60s):
Yeah, it’s just at the bottom of the page and the top part is not filled out but they filled out the bottom so

Nicole (17m 7s):
Right, I noticed that. So on the left hand side they had the top part and the bottom part and one was like an affidavit certifying that they were able to be married and the bottom one was a consent form. So if they were under 21 the bottom part was filled in with the consent I think. Well or is the consent on the top?

Diana (17m 23s):
I think it must be on the top because they are to be above the age of 21 years. So it sounds like at the bottom they’re just saying yeah we’re over 21.

Nicole (17m 33s):
Okay, so that was the

Diana (17m 34s):
Top is

Nicole (17m 34s):
The affidavit that they were old enough and then on the top, so on all of these, only one or the other was filled

Diana (17m 40s):
Out because they’re either above 21 or they’re not,

Nicole (17m 44s):
Right.

Diana (17m 46s):
Yes. Okay, okay. Yeah, this is a great example with that form being put in there. So what did you find out researching this Daniel Wilson in the 1860 substance?

Nicole (17m 56s):
Yes, so looking up Daniel Wilson in the 1860 census. So this was great because the marriage occurred in 1860 so it was kind of easy to then find them in 1860 that same year on the census a couple months later. So this is in May. And then I think usually the census was taken in like June or July, I can’t remember for 1860. So just a couple months later I found that Jacob Myers and Sophia Schlessinger were married at the time the census was taken. So it was like a couple months after and they were living in Ward 10 of Orleans Parish and so was Daniel Wilson. So they were both in the same like area of the Parish Ward 10.

Nicole (18m 38s):
And so that was helpful to see that they were like living nearby each other. Their enumerations were several pages apart though it wasn’t like they were on the next page in the 1860 census. It was like 10 pages, but at least they were within the same ward. I did notice that there was no occupation listed for Daniel Wilson. So it was kind of hard to figure out if my original hypothesis that maybe Daniel Wilson had the same occupation as Jacob Meyer. I thought maybe they knew each other through their work and that brought them together as associates. I did see that Daniel Wilson was 35 years old and born in New York and Jacob Meyer was a carpenter and he was also 35 years old, but he was born in Switzerland.

Nicole (19m 21s):
So I didn’t see a connection, you know, immediately between those two.

Diana (19m 25s):
But I noticed in looking at this, that Daniel’s wife, Katherine was born in Hess, which is Germany.

Nicole (19m 31s):
Good job. So Daniel’s wife Katherine on the 1860s census, it says she was born in Hessi, which you know is Germany. So that’s a good hint because we know also that Sophia Schlessinger on her marriage affidavit that she was over 21 says she’s a native of Germany So, you are right. That is the common thread here. So what I ended up doing is looking on family trees and on family search to see if I could find Daniel Wilson and Catherine I did find them on the family search tree and I found out that Daniel Wilson’s wife was a Schlessinger too.

Nicole (20m 11s):
So Catherine Sleshinger was her maiden name and one of the records attached to the family search tree was a marriage for Daniel and Catherine’s daughter Katie Wilson who was married in 1898 and the parents of the bride were listed as Daniel Wilson and Catherine Schlessinger. And that was also in Louisiana Parish marriages a database on family search. So that was really neat to see that both Daniel Wilson’s wife, Catherine and Sophia had the same surname.

Diana (20m 44s):
Well yeah, that is a huge connection. That is awesome. And that goes right back to the Bondsman being connected to the bride,

Nicole (20m 53s):
Right?

Diana (20m 54s):
Because it was her brother-in-law.

Nicole (20m 56s):
Yeah, I mean we don’t know for a hundred percent sure, but it’s a very strong piece of evidence that Sophia Schlessinger and Catherine Sleshinger were sisters. The fact that Daniel Wilson was the Bondsman on Jacob Myers’s marriage bond

Diana (21m 12s):
Catherine’s 29 and Sophia’s 35. So that’s a good age range. It is a little bit different. That’s 1860 census entry gives her Birthplaces Frankfurt, whereas Hess was the other one. But I believe Hess was just a state in Germany.

Nicole (21m 31s):
Yes I

Diana (21m 32s):
Think it was. So you know, that would require looking at some localities history, putting that all together.

Nicole (21m 39s):
Frankfurt is the largest city in Hess I think. Okay. So I just looked on Wikipedia cuz I’m not a super good German researcher, but

Diana (21m 47s):
I’m not either, especially in this era. So Thank you for looking that up

Nicole (21m 51s):
So that works. That lines up does

Diana (21m 53s):
Work. Yeah. Yeah. Well just having that little bit of knowledge about the Bondsman being connected likely to the bride would give you the good clue. and I think maybe a lot of times the reason it goes unnoticed is because women changing their surname it gets a little

Nicole (22m 7s):
Tricky. Right. Wouldn’t it be easier to figure out if the Bondsman could have just been the woman and she could have put her maiden name as Kathleen Schlessinger, but no it’s her husband and her husband is was Daniel Wilson born in New York?

Diana (22m 18s):
Yes, indeed. Indeed. Well it looks like you did some additional research and actually found a passenger list for Sophia Schlessinger coming from Germany in 1847 to New Orleans, which is, that’s so fun. And and that was my first thought when you talked about the German connection here in New Orleans because I mean that was such a common port for immigrants, you know, that was where a lot of people came from European countries, so that makes sense. But it looks like she was with four other Schlessinger women, including Catherine and an older woman recorded as Magged or MAGA age 56, which could be the possible mother.

Diana (22m 60s):
So that was fun to find out.

Nicole (23m 2s):
Yes, it was really cool. It was a bunch of Schlessinger women, like five of them and all it said was their names and ages and there weren’t any relationships listed. But I would certainly want to to research this woman Maga or Magda with a d, I’m not sure if maybe her name is Magdalene or something. I would wanna research her as a possible mother of Sophia and Katherine. And as I was, you know, finding all this, I’m like, you know what? I wanna put this on the family search tree for anybody who’s related just to have this information cuz these aren’t my Ancestors. And so I was attaching these sources there and I just realized like Daniel Wilson and Catherine Schlessinger, they were not connected at all to Sophia Schlessinger and Jacob Meyers.

Nicole (23m 43s):
They were just totally separate entries in the family search tree and then also in other ancestry, public member trees. Nobody knew this connection either. So it was really neat to be able to find that piece of evidence that ties them together and then for through that finding that they were also together on that passenger list.

Diana (24m 2s):
Yeah, that’s great. This reminds me a little bit of my Georgia Dawson case where I did all this research, she didn’t end up being connected to me, but it was so fun to find it all that I went and put it all out there on family search and connected up all the family because I just wanted the correct research to be out there. So it is kind of fun sometimes to do these random projects on people that aren’t our family or our clients. They’re just people out there we wanna have ’em. Correct. So good

Nicole (24m 30s):
Job. Yeah. Well that actually kind of reminds me of some of the work that Joe Price is doing at BYU with his record Linking lab and he works a lot with his students in the family history of record Linking lab at Brigham Young University to have them, you know, just work on adding sources and fixing up profiles on the family search tree to help people from underrepresented populations. And one of his projects he was doing was the like 1910 census I think for African-Americans and just getting their profiles linked to the 1910 census and creating profiles for people from the 1910 census who are African Americans and helping put those families together, And, it just seems like such a great way to do volunteer work.

Nicole (25m 12s):
And so I think it’s really cool that they’re working on that at at BYU,

Diana (25m 16s):
Right, the exact same thing, just taking unconnected people and connecting them up. Yeah, I just saw a Facebook notice or a blog, some article kind of with some updates for how that’s going. So, okay, here it is for, so on Facebook, the BYU record Linking Lab says, with the help of many BYU students and Adrian Haws at Cornell, we have built a computer generated tree that includes over 140 million people. We link individuals across US, census records 1850 to 1940 and then connect them with their family members using the relationship codes in each census. Cool. Wow. He really is doing some amazing work.

Nicole (25m 56s):
I’m glad you mentioned the fact that they’re using the computer automated things to make it faster and to identify people through their relationships.

Diana (26m 3s):
Yeah, this is a, an actually really huge project that is pretty neat. We’ve had Dr. Price on the podcast before, but maybe we should invite him back on to get the updates so, so neat. But I, if you’re on Facebook, our listeners, I would recommend going and following the record Linking lab and we’ll put a link to that in the show notes so that you can kind of follow the progress and see what they’re doing. It’s pretty neat.

Nicole (26m 29s):
Yeah, that is fun. you know, we weren’t planning on talking about that, but it is, it’s neat to think about what we can do when we find things that, you know, we just end up kind of going down a rabbit hole and we find records for other people and we think, oh well is this just gonna go to waste? Well it doesn’t have to to, we can add it to the family search family tree and then that tree is available for others to come and find their Ancestors. So

Diana (26m 51s):
Yeah, it reminds me of our project that I have on my to-do list and it’s discovering who the two people are who are buried in Palace Cemetery where my parents are buried. And this is where I grew up in Idaho, south of Bur Idaho. And the two oldest tombstones are like from the 1870s and I. Just wanna know who these people are. They’re buried out here in the middle of nowhere in this little tiny cemetery.

Nicole (27m 14s):
Oh, that would be

Diana (27m 15s):
Fun. I’ve taken pictures of the, the tombstones and I started doing a little research on them and found that they were from New York. So I’m even more interested how did they get all the way up to Idaho, what brought them here, what was going on? So I’m gonna do that for a project sometime cuz I, every time I go to that cemetery to see my parents’ graves, I go walk by and wonder about these people.

Nicole (27m 37s):
That reminds me of a Really great presentation I went to at NGS this last year about some graves at a national cemetery and I think it was Amy Garner Laro and she was talking about how she researched these headstones and used a bunch of federal records to figure out who they were, And. it was really neat. Well, thanks for listening to everyone today. I hope that you will research the Bondsmen in the marriage Bonds that you find, even if the surname is different and you’re not sure how they’re related because you may find a neat connection to the bride or even the groom. We hope that you enjoyed these two last episodes about marriage Bonds and good luck in your research.

Nicole (28m 21s):
Bye-bye Thank you for listening. We hope that something you heard today will help you make progress in your research. If you want to learn more, purchase our books, research Like, a Pro, and Research like a Pro with DNA on amazon.com and other book sellers. You can also register for our online courses or study groups of the same names. Learn more at family locket.com/services. To share your progress and ask questions, join our private Facebook group by sending us your book receipt or joining our courses to get updates in your email inbox each Monday. Subscribe to our newsletter@familylocket.com slash newsletter. Please Subscribe rate and review our podcast. We read each of you and are so thankful for them. We hope you’ll start now to research Like a Pro.