“Record of Marriages, County Niagara, State of New York, 1838-1841”

Thanks to the very gracious director of the Lewiston Museum, Pam Hauth, I was granted special permission to transcribe some very early marriage records which are now available on our Lewiston Public Library website (www.lewistonpubliclibrary.org) and in the Local History Room.

While volunteering in the museum over the summer I found myself drawn to some court dockets which contained a binder with the name of one of the Odd Fellows I had been researching, Mr. Jonathan Bell. As I had also been transcribing the early meeting notes for the Odd Fellows, of which Mr. Bell was noted as the recording secretary, I felt almost a personal acquaintance of this gentleman who had been born about 150 years before my own birthday. While leafing through the pages of this 18th century manuscript I noticed that when turned backwards and upside down, the book was also a ledger of all marriages performed by Mr. Jonathan Bell, Justice of the Peace for Lewiston.

The ink was slowly, but surely, fading, pages crumbling, and there were lines so indistinct that I was forced to take the book out into the sunlight. Ultimately, when completed, there were ninety five marriages performed by Mr. Bell, including sixty four marriages of Canadian couples, one of residents of the Tuscarora Reservation and one of a couple who resided in Pennsylvania.