John Lewis and Susan Daniels' Unsourced Marriage "Record"

     ©  Kathy Duncan, 2021

I've been told by various researchers at various times that John Lewis and Susan Daniels married in Kentucky in 1795. When asked where in Kentucky this couple married, because I am always in hope of finding a primary document, they respond that the source is in Ancestry or on an Ancestry tree. The response always gets a little vague from there.

If it could be documented that John Lewis and Susan Daniels married in Kentucky, then surely a location is known. A document should reside in a courthouse or other collection somewhere. 

So what is in Ancestry that indicates that John Lewis married Susan Daniels in Kentucky? What leads so many researchers to this conclusion?? 

Here is what appears on Ancestry: 

The source for this record is the U.S. and International Marriage Records, 1560 - 1900. The question every researcher should ask at this point is why isn't this record more specific? What was the location? What was the exact date? Wouldn't a primary source provide that information?

At the very least, the researcher should ask, "What on earth is the U.S. and International Marriage Records?" As luck would have it, Ancestry provides that information:

"The marriage records in this database were provided by Yates Publishing. Yate Publishing has been publishing genealogical books, periodicals, and quarterlies since 1972. In 1981, the founder, Bill Yates, began a service to provide and collect the family history information in family group sheets. Called the Family Group Sheet Exchange, this service collected over 200,000 pages of family group sheets on paper and several hundred thousand on disk. For more information or to order an original Family Group Sheet on the Family Group Sheet Exchange, please visit Yates Publishing."

The specific source citation for the marriage record for Susan Daniels and John Lewis:

"Source Citation

Source number: 1347.230; source type: Family group sheet, FGSE, listed as parents; Number of Pages: 1."

For the low, low price of $97, you could find out what is on this particular family group sheet by ordering all of the Lewis family group sheets. 

However, in the overwhelming absence of any known marriage record filed in any Kentucky courthouse at any time, the only logical conclusion to draw at this time is that this "source" is an unsourced family group sheet. It is entirely possible that this source just loops back to the family tradition expressed in the Blaine Deposition with an estimated date and location. 

So what is the point? Those of us who are actively searching for the record of John Lewis's first marriage need to keep looking rather than stalling out at the information on this family group sheet. Now, of course, I need to point out the uncomfortable notion that John Lewis may not have even been married to Susan Daniels. That is blasphemy, I know, but there is not one primary source that documents her name. The only source for her is...wait for it...the Blaine Deposition. That means that in addition to continuing to search, we have to be open-minded and deliberate.