Note 428 — Chapter XII · OBLIGATORY CIVIL MARRIAGE IN THE NEW ENGLAND COLONIES

See the acts of 1692 and 1696: Acts and Resolves, I, 61, 209, 210. By the former statute ministers and justices are required to make a quarterly report of marriages solemnized by them to the clerk of the sessions of the peace. The act of 1716, referred to in Sewall's Diary, provides that the town clerk shall send in to the same officer an annual transcript of marriages recorded by him. "The volume of such returns for Suffolk County has very recently (written 1882) been transferred to the custody of the city registrar of Boston."—Sewall's Diary, in 5 Mass. Hist. Coll., VII, 112, and the note by the editors.