Wedding Wednesday: Pennsylvania Marriages Prior to 1790

Today, I thought I would introduce readers to a resource: Pennsylvania Marriages Prior to 1790. This text was compiled by John B. Linn and William H. Engle. It was published by Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc. out of Baltimore, Maryland. I am, to be honest, not sure it includes ALL marriages before 1790 and I say this only because I found no Eckmans listed and I have other (church) records indicating several were in fact married before then.

That said, I did find several Van Horn family members. The text offers simply the raw basics. It provides, in alpha order, the year, month, day and names of the couple.

So for example, in 1776 Jacob Van Horn married Lydia Moode. The text offers the following: "1776, Feb. 1. Vanhorn, Jacob, and Lydia Moode."

It does not tell me who married them, if it was a civil service or in a church, or even what city or county in which the marriage occurred. The text also does not offer the parents of the couple or even the couple's ages at the time of marriage. It does give enough to proceed with a broad search on a site like Ancestry.com.

There I found Lydia listed in the Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy Vol. II.

That resource shows a "Lydia (form Moode)" married at the Fall Monthly Meeting. It does give a different date however, stating she was married on "02 Tenth 1776". Ancestry.com translates the Tenth Month as being October. However, Quakers used a different calendar.  That said, the dates still do not match up since February (listed in the first mentioned reference) would be the 12th month on the Quaker calendar. The 10th month would have been December, as the calendar began in March.

After Lydia's name, there is the phrase "dis mou." Dis means "disowned, disowned for;" and mou means "married out of unity." This means that one was not of the Quaker faith. The text (see the above image) implies Lydia was the Quaker and Jacob was not. The other reason I come to this conclusion is that the two were married in Bucks County (we'll get there in a moment) where a good number of the Vanhorn/Van Horn family attended the Dutch Reformed church.

Married in Bucks County. Ancestry.com also found another researcher with Jacob VanHorn in their family. Jacob, son of Gabriel and Martha Brelsford VanHorn, married Lydia Moode in Bucks County on 1 February 1776, according to this other researcher (who did not list any sources). This researcher also identifies Andrew and Hannah Headley Moode as Lydia's parents.

Note/Source:
For more Quaker abbreviations, see "Glossary of Quaker Terms" as posted on Rootsweb.