Granville County, NC - Marriage Bonds

Below is the list of marriages for Granville County I've found. Currently, the list is only for the surname Bradford, but I hope to add more in the future. I have preserved the spelling of names and abbreviations of names, but put the date in the format of the first 3 letters of the month, then the day, then the year. In most cases, the marriages dates are written as "The _ th day of (month) in the _ year of our Lord"

A note about marriage records in North Carolina and Granville County specifically. From about 1741-1868, the state of North Carolina recorded marriages as marriage bonds - there were marriage licenses, but were destroyed and very few actually exist. Not all marriages were recorded, it was not required by law. The practice of crying the banns at their local church was still practiced until the early 1800s and some bonds don't exist due to court house fires. Granville is a lucky county and one of my favorite to search in because it is a very old county with no fires (knock on wood!). There may be some missing marriage bonds, but not from fire, rather misplaced over the years. In the 1980s, the State Archives of North Carolina created microfiche of all the marriage bonds in North Carolina...except Granville County. Why? Granville County had not yet sent all the marriage bonds to them. Now the State Archives has all Granville County marriage bonds and there is a seperate published index of those records. That book is in many libraries as well as the State Library of North Carolina. Information in marriage bonds can be simplied to groom, bride, bond date - usually a few days before the marriage, bondsman - often a relative of either bride or groom, witness - often someone who worked in the courthouse, and sometimes other notes. If the bride or groom was underage, for example, or if the couple were African American, which was often, but not always noted with a (c) after the person's name.

View the list by grooms or brides

By Grooms

By Brides