Information about the NC Cohabitation records created in March 1866 appears at the NCDigital collection where these records are housed. The description reads as follows:
In March 1866, the General Assembly passed “An Act Concerning Negroes and Persons of Color or of Mixed Blood,” which included a statute that enslaved people who had been living together as man and wife during slavery were now considered to be legally married. Called Cohabitation Bonds, these were filed with the Register of Deeds and were retroactive, legitimizing the marriages of former enslaved peoples. Typically included was the name and age of the bride and groom and length of time they had been “married”. Some counties include the name of the enslaver and/or the number of children the couple may have had. While in the original records cohabitation bonds are sometimes named as such, for many marriage records we cannot determine the race of the couple. In some instances, other marriage records from 1866 may be included in the collection that do not specifically include the term “cohabitation”.
These post Civil War records were created in all southern states so be sure to check in other states if your ancestors were there. For now we will focus on the NC collection of records that are digital and online. You can visit the main link for the collection and browse to the county of interest. The main link is here -
https://digital.ncdcr.gov/collections/cohabitation-records
You will see the counties listed alphabetically. You can browse or use the search box at the top of the main page to go directly to the county of interest. Searching for "Wake" county shows that there are 114 pages of records in the collection with six records per page.
While browsing the Wake County records I happened upon the same Christmas surnamed couple that had been featured in a previous
blog post before the records became available from NCDigital.
While browsing, I also found a couple registering and using two different last names.
There are two different ways to view the files. The quick preview is a smaller screen and not very user friendly. Once you decide to have a good browse, you will want to open the viewer from the button located just below the preview pane on the right. This gives you full screen viewing, zoom control and an image scroll at the bottom of the screen.
I did not find these images searchable, but that is understandable since they are all handwritten. Perhaps in the future, AI transcription will overcome that obstacle. For now, the full screen viewer tool makes for the best page by page browsing experience.
If you are searching for formerly enslaved ancestors in Wake County, other NC counties or across the southern states, be sure to search out the cohabitation records for your kin. When searching other states, check the FamilySearch wiki for Cohabitation Record locations. -
https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Cohabitation_Records
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