From This Day Forward – Documenting Marital Unions of Enslaved and Emancipated Persons, with Renate Yarborough Sanders

Emily Sienkiewicz

Despite the fact that their marriages were not legally recognized before 1865, enslaved couples were uniting in “quasi-marital” relationships, and were cohabitating as husband and wife, as evidenced by many extant documents created during and after the end of America’s Civil War. In this presentation, we explore examples of documents that provide evidence of these relationships, and sources for finding them. For details see familytreewebinars.com/webinar/from-this-day-forward-documenting-marital-unions-of-enslaved-and-emancipated-persons/