1 The season of marriage in Augusta County, Va., from 1749 to 1773 was as follows:

Image

 

Marriage Index

Percent of all

Month

(m = 100)

Marriages

January

68.09

5.7

February

110.64

9.2

March

110.64

9.2

April

110.64

9.2

May

144.68

12.1

June

93.62

7.8

July

127.67

10.6

August

102.13

8.5

September

102.13

8.5

October

68.09

5.7

November

93.62

7.8

December

68.09

8.5

Total

1200.04

 

Source: Computed from data in William A. Crozier, Early Virginia Marriages (Baltimore, 1968), 85-88.

2 In eight English border parishes scattered through the counties of Cumberland and Westmorland, all showed a peak season of marriage in the months of April, May, June and July. See E. A. Wrigley and R. S. Schofield, The Population History of England, 1541-1871 (Cambridge, 1981), 302; and Ann Kussmaul, “Time and Space, Hoofs and Grain: The Seasonality of Marriage in England,” JIH 15 (1985), 755-79.
   This North British pattern differed from that of East Anglia, which showed a strong autumn peak, and the Midlands, which tended to be mixed or bimodal. Marriages in Roman Catholic countries of western Europe, including France, Italy and Belgium, generally showed a January-February peak similar to that in Anglican Virginia. The Cambridge Group offer a materialist explanation for these variations, in terms of systems of production and agricultural regimes (arable, wood pasture), but their own evidence does not support them.