In my genealogy research I’m finding a lot of ancestors on the frontier who lived together as husband and wife for years before a traveling minister would come along and marry them.
"Lot's" of ancestors on the frontier with no access to a minister or official or who could post a Bann on a church door or obtain a license, that is a little hard to believe that you would have lot's of them.
What years were these, in which colonies or states?
He is right. The practice was quite common on the frontier from the beginning right up into the 20th Century. An example would be Wyatt Earp. He had two common law wives in his lifetime. There was no licenses or church weddings, they just lived as husband and wife. I would speculate that what we see today as common, the big church wedding was beyond the means of most in the 18th and 19th Centuries. Recently read a history of the Hatfield McCoy feud. Marriage was not done with govt. licenses or church for that matter. People just lived together and just proclaimed themselves married. As for gays(females only), they even had a name for it. When two old spinsters lived their lives together it was called a Boston Marriage in the 19th Century. They difference was that if someone did not like it, they were not forced to accept it themselves, unlike today.