* Marriage Bonds

[janefrances]

I'm in the process of adding the above to FH. As I don't have the allegation and just the bond, the only Fact types I could see are for the Marriage Allegation or Marriage Contract. I don't really want to use a custom fact.

I thought another way would be to just attach the bond as a source to the marriage fact. Just wondering what would be the best way to go about this? Many thanks

[tatewise]

According to https://www.york.ac.uk/media/borthwick/ ... ebonds.pdf both the allegation and the bond are associated with a Marriage Licence, so perhaps use that standard event.

BTW: There is no standard event for a Marriage Allegation.

[AdrianBruce]

Firstly I would say that a Marriage Contract, as I understand it, is a completely different beast. A Contract would be a legal agreement between the families of the two parties that the marriage would take place - it might cover things like dowry and how the wife-to-be will be supported should her husband die before her.

Having said that, my own prompt notes describe dowry and support-if-widowed as Marriage Settlement. I don't think I've ever used a Marriage Contract fact but maybe some contracts include settlements as well????

I don't actually see a Fact-Type of Marriage Allegation in my list, so unless I've hidden it deeply, I'm not sure what to do about those.

What I do is this... The Bond and Allegation (at least in England & Wales) are part of the process of obtaining a Marriage Licence. Conventional widom is that we virtually never see the actual licences but that was the point of creating the Bond and Allegation. Therefore the Fact Type that I use is Marriage License. That will have several possible different source-records cited against it - one source-record might be the Bond, another the Allegation or a third might be an entry in the Marriage Licence Act Books.

[AdrianBruce]

... I don't think I've ever used a Marriage Contract fact ...

I've just checked and no, I have no current use of Marriage Contract events. I do have Marriage Settlement events in relation to Church of Ireland marriages where there are agreements how the bride-to-be will be supported if her husband predeceases her - these appear in the (rather wonderful if difficult) Registry of Deeds in Dublin.

I think in the past that I have used all sorts of event types for Church of Scotland marriages because quite often there is no record of the actual marriage itself - only the couple having given their names in for marriage, which would lead to the calling of the banns. However, I appear to have updated them all to Marriage Banns or Marriage events now.

[janefrances]

Oops Sorry! the Marriage allegation is my custom fact. Apologies for the confusion.

Thank you both for your help. I'm going to use the standard Marriage License fact and link my source to that.