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The abolition of slavery raised the question of the freedmen's marriages. In
1866 the General Assembly passed "An Act Concerning Negroes and Persons of Color
or of Mixed Blood." Those persons who wished to register their pre-emancipation
marriages were required to appear before the clerk of the county court or a
justice of the peace to acknowledge their marital status. These acknowledgments
were to be recorded and regarded as proof that a marriage had, indeed, existed.
Bound volumes bearing such titles as Negro Cohabitation Certificates, Record f
Marriage and Cohabitation, or Record of Marriages by Freedmen may be found in
offices of registers of deeds or in the State Archives; some few may be in the
offices of clerks of Superior Courts. The surviving records do no represent all
slave marriages by any means. Click here to see the complete male listing of cohabitation
records for Columbus County, NC.
Cohabitation records contain the statements required by the above-mentioned law;
most were entered before 1 September 1866, the end of the period legally set
aside for the purpose. The data in these bound volumes and associated loose
papers are not always entered in marriage registers. It is not uncommon to find
that a slave couple had lived together for many years, indicating a family
stability that has yet to be evaluated properly in studies of slavery in North
Carolina.
(Source: North Carolina Research--Second Edition; Published 1996 by the North
Carolina Genealogical Society and edited by Helen F.M. Leary; Chapter 10; pg.
161.)