This work is a compilation of data found in 1,478 marriage bonds or consents of Essex County, Virginia, for the years 1804 through 1850. These are the earliest marriage records that survive for the county
those before were either burned or inadvertently destroyed. These original records are not generally served to researchers, rather researchers are directed to a bound Register of Marriages (Book One) that lists the bonds. Each entry references the page in this Register on which the information may be found. The most bonds were issued in 1835 (forty-seven) and 1827 (forty), with the other years averaging about thirty each. The fewest bonds are found for 1826 (seventeen).Individual entries in this work were derived primarily from marriage bonds and consents (by guardian or parent), and have been supplemented with data taken from outside sources such as: family Bible records, cemetery records, military records, and other publications. Not all entries contain information from outside sources. The format is two-fold: the first part of the paragraph is used for sequencing of the groom, and includes what data the compiler has found outside of the marriage record itself. Followed by this is the consolidated public marriage record (with the names of the bride and groom in capital letters), including the date of the marriage bond, and citing the main sources for the information used. The text is supplemented with nearly 900 footnotes by the compiler, an every-name index that contains over 9,000 entries, and a bibliography.