All of the data contained herein was gathered from records in the Clerk of Court’s office at the Madison Parish courthouse in Tallulah during the months of June through September 1997. This data was obtained by viewing the actual Marriage Bond and License records themselves. No previously made indexes were used. The information is contained in two large books. The first (called Book A in this report) is all hand-written and contains data from 1866 to early 1869. The second (called Book B in this report) is not all hand-written, but is made up of Marriage Bond and License forms – two of each per page - which were later filled in by hand. Book B is the larger of the two, and contains data from late 1869 to middle 1880 with the last 50 or so pages being blank. There were no official Madison Parish marriage records before1866.

Every effort has been made to preserve accuracy, especially in the spelling of names. However, in many instances the handwriting was very difficult to decipher, and it was fairly common to see the same name spelled two or three different ways on the license and bond forms.

The Bride and Groom Lists are arranged alphabetically by last name with the initials of the presiding official in the last column. These initials are indexed to the officiant’s name and title in the last section of the book. The name of the church is given where it is available. In addition the Book (A or B) and page number where the record may be found is also listed.

It will be noted that the annotations (FMC) and (FWC) have been added to some of the early names. These annotations signify Free Man of Color and Free Woman of Color, respectively, and do not appear after mid-1868. It will also be noted that some marriages were entered into the records twice, and, in some instances, with different dates or different spellings. These duplications were included for the sake of completeness, since they could be meaningful to someone.