Researching the western Virginia Terry lines in early Augusta Co., Virginia it is clear that there is some blanks in records and documentary evidence as to marriages that are affirmed in other legal records.
It is clear that people in the region, in that time period, were not incapable of traveling long distances for religious needs (one source recounted a man intent on being baptized and with no appropriate church body or acceptable minister handy nearby he traveled from southern Virginia into New Jersey and others into Pennsylvania for marriages, baptisms, and similar events).
The earliest religious body in the regions of early Augusta County was the Presbyterian Church, followed by the Society of Friends and the Baptists to varying degrees of acceptance and success (depending on the area and population). The Shenandoah Valley region of early Augusta County and Orange county from which it was formed, were largely settled by an influx of Scot-Irish new to the country. These came with an inclination to Protestantism (Church of England (Anglican) or Presbyterian (as found in Scotland). What many people fail to remember about those early colonial periods is that unrest and revolution were occurring not merely in social and political arenas but also in religious ones. Coming into the newly opened southern and southwestern lands were those who were descendants of those seeking religious freedom (such as the early Puritans and Quakers and Anabaptists).
Legally, many of the colonies demanded fees for the permission to marry. These bonds might be very expensive in some colonies (such as North Carolina) and required someone to - in our modern parlance - countersign or serve as a bond that the marriage would take place and the required forfeit and fees would be paid. It is highly likely, the land populating with free-thinking and slightly rebellious people that some marriages might be conducted without bringing in the government (and thus the crown or the newly minted national government once it was established). Many held that the things of God were to have nothing to do with government and marriage was among those things of God.
So, it was interesting to see on a map a chapel listed on an early Augusta County deed image. Then even more so as I read in one source that in 1755 The ruling Vestry of the Presbyterian Church serving the Augusta Co. area ordered a Rev. John Jones to preach at James Neeley's on Roan Oak. This was an early leader and pioneer of later Botetourt Co., and a nearby of William Terry and wife Rachel. Their daughter will marry a Jonathan Harrison sometime before 1793 and identify as living in Claiborne Co., Tennessee. No record of their marriage has come to light and one has to wonder if they might have married locally, in that small chapel and the records long gone or lost in some archive amid the papers of the papers or that church? The large group of Harrisons in the region (not sure if they are connected to Jonathan or merely a coincidence of names since there were two unrelated groups in the area) included ministers in the Baptist faith. In addition, if the emerging connection between the Terry and the Hart lines (cousins) bears out, they too were in the region, and many were both Quaker and Baptist minsters.
An intriguing line of research would be to search for those early records for mentions of marriages in the area that might have been conducted by more freewheeling ministers. Such may be hidden may have been burned and destroyed by fire, war, and passing of time.
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