BEGATS AND BEQUEATHALS

In the posting about Nancy and her husband William I linked above, I noted that this couple married about or before 1825 in Lawrence or Morgan County, Alabama. As I also stated, I’m basing that marriage date on the fact that their first child, a son named Charles Wesley Morris, was born about 1826. The linked posting also tells you that I had not found a record of the marriage of William Morris and Nancy Lindsey. I noted that in a database for Lawrence County marriages, the website of Lawrence County Archives lists an original marriage record for a William Morris dated 7 May 1818 which I had not seen. As I stated, this marriage record appears in the county index to marriage records as a marriage bond, with the bride’s name not recorded.

I’ve now found the 7 May 1818 bond William Morris gave for his upcoming marriage in Lawrence County (see the digital images at the head of this posting). It’s an interesting document: on that date, William Morris gave bond with Benjamin Jones as William prepared to marry, but, oddly enough, the bond does not give the name of the woman William Morris was intending to marry! I’ve almost never encountered a marriage bond that doesn’t state that piece of information.

There are, however, some good reasons, I think, to conclude that this is probably the bond for William Morris’ marriage to Nancy Lindsey. This marriage took place in the time frame when it seems that couple married, and it would make sense for them to have married in Lawrence County, where Nancy’s brother Dennis had already moved his family from Wayne County, Kentucky.

The very next marriage bond in the file of Lawrence County marriage bonds is a bond for the marriage of William Morris’ brother Nimrod Morris to Delana Parish on 15 April 1821. On that same day as well, a Wilson Parish married a Nancy Morris who is, I suspect, a sister to Nimrod and William — and I’ll bet that Wilson and Delana Parish were also brothers and sisters.

Benjamin Jones, who gave bond with William Morris for his marriage in 1818, shows up all in various records of Mark Lindsey in Lawrence County.[2] He was a son of Methodist minister Elliott Jones, who was a close associate of Mark and of the father-in-law of Dennis Lindsey, Thomas Brooks, who was also a Methodist minister. Elliott Jones was the minister who presided at the marriage of Dennis Lindsey to Thomas Brooks’ daughter Jane in Wayne County, Kentucky, on 18 February 1813.[3]

Nimrod Morris also had a Methodist church named for him in Hardin County, Tennessee, where he and wife Delana moved from Lawrence County, Alabama — Morris Chapel Methodist church. Nimrod and wife Delana are buried in the cemetery of this church.

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[1] On Mark Lindsey, see here, here, here, and here.

[2] See e.g. here.

[3] On Elliott Jones, see here.