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"Applying Lessons Learned" When Researching Female Ancestors

Image by rawpixel.com   Women in our family trees frequently get short shrift, don't they? With maiden names often undiscovered, they sometime languish, faded and unknown, next to their better-documented husbands on our family trees. Records don't often exist for them, distant descendants might not know their names, or they died without progeny to remember and carry their names forward. What if there was a resource that could help you discover more about those silent women to bring them out of the shadows? Such a resources exists in Telling Her Story: A Guide to Writing About Women of the Past by Sharon DeBartolo Carmack (Salt Lake City: Scattered Leaves Press, 2024). I used what I learned from this book to craft a series of blog posts on my great-great-great grandmother Mary Jane Sheridan. And I wrote about that process in the article: "Applying Lessons Learned," for the September 2025 issue of  Stirpes , the Journal of the Texas State Genealogical Society. Read it...
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GENEALOGY CHALLENGE 2021 - Marriage Record


 

GENEALOGY CHALLENGE 2021

Marriage Record - January 9th entry of a 31-day challenge to post a document, photo or artifact on social media every day in January.

by Nancy Gilbride Casey 


One very important lesson for genealogy researches to learn is to always look at the pages before and after digitized images online. For me, this practice uncovered an additional document attached to the marriage record of my husband's great grandparents Stephen Henry Casey and Nellie Frances Taylor (pictured shortly after their wedding in 1909, above).1

Their marriage record was found easily enough on Ancestry; it shows that Stephen, then aged 20 and Nellie, aged 19, applied for a license in Muskogee, Oklahoma and were married on 14 July 1909 by Rev. A.N. Hall, Pastor of the First Baptist Church, Muskogee.2 It seemed pretty clear cut. 


 

I didn't notice immediately the letter folded over to the left side of the book...


 

...eventually I noticed the Thos. B. Casey signature.

Paging back one image, I found attached to the marriage record was a letter from Stephen's father, Thomas Benton Casey:


Pryor Creek, Oklahoma

July 12, 1909

Clerk of the Court, Muskogee County

Dear Sirs, 

This is the certify that I am 

satisfied and perfectly willing for my son S.H. Casey

and Miss Nellie F. Taylor to unite in marriage 

on July 14, 1909 and as I cannot be present with him I am sending 

you this letter & ask that the license be granted

him and all courtesy be shown him possible the 

same will be appreciated by me.

His father, Thos. B. Casey

Pryor Creek, Oklahoma

July 12, '09

State of Oklahoma

County of Mayes

Subscribed and Sworn to before

me this 14th day of July 1909.

J.C. Chandler 

Justice of the Peace


Stephen was not yet 21, and according to Oklahoma law at the time, was under the legal age to marry:

"Any unmarried male of the age of twenty-one years or upwards, and any unmarried female of the age of eighteen years or upwards and not otherwise disqualified, is capable of contracting and consenting to marriage; but no female under the age of eighteen years, and no male under the age of twenty-one years shall enter into the marriage relation, nor any license issued whereof, except upon the consent and authority given either in person or in writing, by a parent or guardian..." 3



 

One can picture Stephen hand-carrying the precious letter to Muskogee to claim his bride.

Thomas Casey's letter helped begin a relationship which was to last over six decades; Stephen and Nellie Casey were married for over 62 years, until Stephen's death in 1972.


NEXT UP: Census Record

 

1 Nellie F. (Taylor) Casey and Stephen H. Casey photograph, ca. 1909; digital image; Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/mediaui-viewer/collection/1030/tree/34074975/person/18860988756/media/06b9817b-df22-4dde-a204-29ed832cfe00 : accessed 9 Jan. 2021), originally shared by mcasey316, 2002.
2Marriage Record, Vol. 3, Muskogee County, July 5, 1909-May 14, 1910, p. 17, marriage of Stephen H. Casey and Nellie F. Taylor (1909); digital image, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:9392-9F3W-86 : accessed 9 January 2021); citing FHL Film 004708239, image 255-256/696.
3 John T. Hays, John Robert Thomas, William R. Brownlee, J.H. Sutherlin, The Revised Laws of the State of Oklahoma Embracing All Laws from 1890 to 1910, Inclusive, Now in Force (Columbia: E. W. Stephens Publishing Company, 1911), p. 1562; digital image, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Revised_Laws_of_the_State_of_Oklahom/7Xo0AQAAMAAJ : accessed 8 January 2021).

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