Thursday, September 18, 2014

Treasure Chest Thursday - Post 232: 1832 Marriage Record of Abigail (Gates) Seaver and Isaac Seaver in Westminster, Mass.

It's Treasure Chest Thursday - time to look in my digital image files to see what treasures I can find for my family history and genealogy musings.

The treasure today is the marriage record of Abigail (Gates) Seaver to Isaac Seaver in Westminster, Massachusetts in 1832.


The marriage record is:


A transcription of this record is:

Nov^r 13     Mr Isaac Seaver and Mrs. Abigail
1832            Seaver both of Westminster
 "   29th        Published for marriage as the law directs
                                                    E.J. Kendall Town Clerk

The source citation for this record is:

Massachusetts, Town and Vital Records, 1620-1988, digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com), "Westminster, Births, Marriages, and Deaths," page 326 (penned, image 393 of 1195), Isaac Seaver and Mrs. Abigail Seaver entry, 1832.

This record, apparently, documents the intention of marriage, by publishing it, on 13 November 1832 in the Westminster, Massachusetts town records.  I wonder if the notation "29th" was the actual marriage day.  I don't know.  There are other instances of a second date on some of the marriage records on the town record page, and they are all two to five weeks after the Intentions date.

The published Westminster Vital Record book confounds this even more by noting the Marriage Intentions were on 29 November 1832!


The town record book is an Original Source, while the published vital record book is a Derivative Source.  Here is a good example of finding the Original Source and not relying completely on the published book.   But I still don't know if the 29th November date is the actual marriage date.

Abigail (Gates) Seaver (1797-1867) was the widow of Benjamin Seaver (1791-1825), and my third great-grandmother.  Isaac Seaver (1802-1870) was the brother of Benjamin Seaver who married his brother's widow seven years after Benjamin's death.  Interestingly, the marriage occurred only two months after the death of Martha (Whitney) Seaver, the mother of Benjamin and Isaac.  

Benjamin and Abigail (Gates) Seaver had four children (Abigail, Lucinda, Isaac and Benjamin) between 1817 and 1825 - my second great-grandfather Isaac Seaver was born in 1823, and lost his father in 1825, and gained a step-father in 1832, a man he'd known all his life, his uncle and probable namesake, Isaac Seaver.  Isaac and Abigail (Gates) (Seaver) Seaver had two children, Lyman and Loring in 1834 and 1837, respectively.


Copyright (c) 2014, Randall J. Seaver


2 comments:

Geolover said...

I have seen some records in Maine (when still part of Mass.) where the couple's intention was recorded by the Town Clerk on one date, and then a couple of weeks later the same Clerk recorded his certification of publication.

I do think your record here is difficult to interpret. Finding a date of newspaper publication would help a lot.

IsraelP said...

In the Bible (and subsequently modern Jewish law), a woman cannot marry her husband's brother exept in the case of a levirate marriafge - which this obviously isn't.

I deliberately use the word "cannot" rather than "may not" because the marriage would be invalid. It's one of the lists of forbidden relationships which we today call "incest."