May 22, 2025
Letters 5/21/2025
| Good Morning Dutch Cousins |
| I just wrote up a little piece to submit for publication in the next Dutch Cousins newsletter titled “Capstone: The Banta-Shively Marriage Bond”. It just talks about my recent trip to Harrodsburg and Stanford for history and genealogy research. I am attaching two pics also, of my Low Dutch ancestor’s 1783 marriage bond. Thank you and talk to you later, Joe Putnam   |
~Capstone: The Banta-Shively Marriage Bond~by Joe Putnam One day last year in mid-October I took a day trip deep into central Kentucky. As I look back on it I see that it was the culmination of a decade long genealogy journey. I hatched a plan to visit historical sites in four towns in central Kentucky in a single day, the farthest one being 170 miles from my home in southern Indiana. At the last minute I convinced my retired parents to accompany me. The main goals were genealogy research at the old courthouse in Stanford and revisiting Harrodsburg for their 250th anniversary. I made those two goals, and the William Whitley house also, but time ran short and I did not visit every site I had intended to. My mother and I went into the old (circa 1909) brick courthouse in Stanford, Kentucky. I had been to many courthouses and annex buildings in southern Indiana but had never did genealogy at a Kentucky courthouse before. Apparently in Stanford, the clerk’s office is in the annex while the records vault is in the old courthouse. A lady from another office showed us to the records room, with a vault door, and helped us find the file drawer we needed. As other Dutch Cousins who have been to Stanford doubtless already know old, the really old marriage records are handwritten marriage bonds. The bonds are in individual plastic sleeves, for their preservation, each record in a file folder, the folders grouped by years in drawers that rest in a cubby-hole type wall shelf. I needed drawer number one, at the top left, and the clerk just barely managed to reach it from the rickety wooden library ladder, as I steadied the ladder from below. I offered to go up for her, but she declined for “liability” reasons. And there it was. The 1783 marriage bond for my 4th great grandparents Henry Shively and Mary Banta. Mary was a daughter of “Father Henry” Banta and his second wife Antje Demarest. And who was the bondsman who signed as surety for young Henry Shively? Why it was James Harrod himself! The courthouse lady had told me it was fine to take pics of the records, and I took several of it. Not all of the writing on the bond was clearly legible, but most was, and the signatures of Henry Shively and James Harrod certainly were. Without realizing it, I think I peaked out on my genealogy research at that moment. Mary’s newspaper obituary in 1844, as quoted in the late Lottie Compton McDowell’s book Descendants of Henry and Mary Banta Shively, stated that she and Henry were married “at Harrod’s Station”. They obviously were well acquainted with James Harrod. I wanted to visit Old Fort Harrod State Park, the HHS, and the Old Mud Meetinghouse again, but it was 3PM when we got back to Harrodsburg. Time limited, we settled on dinner and the fort. Where do I go from here? There are other courthouses I could visit, and other documents I could look up about Henry and Mary, and about their siblings. But I think I may have hit the high point of my genealogy journey last October as I held Henry and Mary’s marriage bond in the courthouse in Stanford. Metaphorically, it was the capstone of my genealogy research that began in late 2013, a journey that went far beyond what I initially dreamed. —————————————————————————————————————–  Sorry we missed this Good Luck Nancy Hill Thanks for all you did. You will be missed. —————————————————————————————————————- Judith Cassidy has a New Book Out    The book can now be purchased through Amazon lots of new information, maps etc thx Judith Smith Cassidy —————————————————————————————————————- Sorry for the delay in Newsletter we have had a little bump in the road. Keep submitting your information. Thanks Ron Snider See http://www.DutchCousins.org website for more resources. Many documents, links to photo albums & videos and Internet sites. There is also a lot of exchange of information in the Facebook group- Dutch Cousins in Kentucky. |
