One of the major difficulties tracing a family line back is locating marriage records before 1900. This major source for family names on the female side can often be difficult to find if not impossible. There are several reasons for this.

Some records have been lost over the years. Until sometime in the 1870's, marriage records in this area were kept in the form of loose bonds and returns. Some of these odds and ends of pieces of paper were simply misplaced, others were turned over to the individuals for filing with pension applications.

Late in the 19th century, about 1890, all the remaining early marriages in Harlan County were recopied by the county court clerk's office into two marriage registers, Book A and Book One. Most of the early marriages were copied twice. The originals were then apparently thrown away.

Other marriages, although properly performed, were never actually recorded. It was not uncommon for a couple to be married by a traveling preacher riding a circuit of congregations in the mountains. These circuit riders did not always bother to drop in at the county seat and record the marriages they had performed in that county.

Other marriages performed by the local justice of the peace were also not necessarily turned in to the county court clerk. Accuracy and ability with paperwork was not a requirement for the office of magistrate or justice of the peace and some of them had to be prodded by the court to turn in any of their papers when they were no longer in office.

Although a couple may have lived in one county, the nearest place to get married may have been in another county or in another state. Many people from upper Martins Fork and Cranks got married in Lee County, Va. Others from the Letcher County area went to Wise County, Va., to be married. People on Pucketts and Brownies Creek might have been married in Bell County, or before 1867 when Bell was formed, in Knox County.

If you are trying to trace your family, a marriage in Virginia is to be hoped for as the names of the bride and groom's parents were recorded in most of the Virginia records from the early years, but were not included in Kentucky records until late in the century and even then, that part of the license form was often not filled out.

Not all couples were legally married. Unless a couple lived near a justice of the peace or the county seat, it was necessary to take considerable time away from the dawn-to-dusk work of life to go in and attend to the paperwork that many people felt unnecessary. The cash required for the license fee was often not so easy to come by either.

Instead, some marriages were what some people call `broom-stick' marriages. The term broomstick comes from the tradition in some areas of placing a broomstick across the doorway of the couple's intended home. The bridal pair would step over the stick together signifying their commitment to each other. In their own eyes and those of their families and neighbors they were considered married and they acted and lived as such.

This sort of marriage was not uncommon in the early years and some of these couples were later properly married with all the paperwork which accounts for some of the discrepancies between recorded marriage dates and the birthdates of the oldest children. If the wife and children consistently went by the man's surname in census and other records and a recorded marriage cannot be found, this implies either a lost record or a `broomstick' marriage, as does references to wife and children in deeds, wills and pension records.

Simply living together was more common in isolated frontier areas such as Harlan than it was in areas like New England with older more civilized settlements. But, it must be remembered that people were more casual about their names as well and there are documented instances of children taking their mother's surname even though their parents had been legally married. This might occur in cases where the parents were divorced, but is also known to have occurred when the father died when the children were young and the mother returned to her people.