In old Narragansett; romances and realities

by Alice Morse Earle

WHERE THREE TOWNS MEET

In the heart of Narragansett three towns meet at a cross-roads; they are North Kingston, South Kingston, and Exeter. It is a lonely cross-roads, even in days of summer, though Weaver Rose’s cheerful home is near it; but it is picturesque and beautiful in its extended view, its overreach of splendid locust-trees, and the tangle of wild flowers fringing the roadside and rioting along the stone walls. There is no monument or stone, nothing to mark the special tradition of this corner, as Squaw Rock at Indian Corner, half a mile farther on the road, a sinister rock with dark, blood-red veins and splashes, a rock whereon were dashed the brains of a Narragansett squaw by her drunken brave of a husband.

This cross-roads, or “corner,” has been the scene many times of episodes as uncivilized, if not as cruel, as the one that immortalized Squaw Rock. Here—a spot chosen either through fancy, tradition, or even rustic fashion, or because here three townships meet—have taken place several of those absurd bequests of barbaric peoples known as shift-marriages.

These ungallant and extremely inconvenient ceremonies are not American inventions or Yankee notions, but an old English custom, being in brief the marriage of a woman, usually a widow, clad only in her shift, to avoid hampering her newly made husband with her old debts. All through New England, in New York and Pennsylvania, this custom was known until this century. In Narragansett it was comparatively common. The exact form of the sacrifice (for sacrifice it was of modesty to the new husband’s cupidity) and notions about it varied in localities. Let me give a marriage-certificate of a shift-marriage which took place on this very cross-roads where the three towns meet:

“On March 11th, 1717, did Philip Shearman Take the Widow Hannah Clarke in her Shift, without any other Apparel, and led her across the Highway, as the Law directs in such Cases and was then married according to law by me. William Hall, Justice.”

It is not specified in this certificate that this grotesque proceeding took place at night, but, out of some regard for decency, and to avoid notoriety, such was usually the case.

There is an ancient registration book of births, deaths, and marriages at the handsome new Town Hall at South Kingston, R. I. There is an entry within it of a shift-marriage:

“Thomas Calverwell was joyned in marriage to Abigail Calverwell his wife the 22. February, 1719-20. He took her in marriage after she had gone four times across the highway in only her shift and hair-lace and no other clothing. Joyned together in marriage by me.

“George Hazard, Justice.”

This was but two years after the marriage of Widow Clarke, and the public parade may have taken place on the same spot, but there is a slight variation, in that the fair Abigail’s ordeal was prolonged to four times crossing the road. The naming of the hair-lace seems trivial and superfluous with such other complete disrobing, but it was more significant than may appear to a careless reader. At that date women wore caps even in early girlhood, and were never seen in public without them. To be capless indicated complete dishabille. A court record still exists wherein is an entry of a great insult offered to the town constables by an angry and contemptuous woman. She threatened to pull off her head-gear and go before them, “only in her hair-lace and hair, like a parcel of pitiful, beggarly curs that they were.” So the abandon of only a hair-lace comported well with Abigail Calverwell’s only a shift.

Hopkinton is another Narragansett town, in the same county. In 1780 David Lewis married at Hopkinton, Widow Jemima Hill, “where four roads meet,” at midnight, she being dressed only in her shift. This was to avoid payment of Husband Hill’s debts. Ten years later, in a neighboring town, Richmond, still in the South County, Widow Sarah Collins appeared in the twilight in a long shift, a special wedding-shift covering her to her feet, and was then and thus married to Thomas Kenyon.

Westerly, still in the same Narragansett county, had the same custom and the same belief.

“To all People whom It May Concern. This Certifies that Nathanell Bundy of Westerly took ye Widdow Mary Parmenter of sd town on ye highway with no other clothing but shifting or smock on ye Evening of ye 20 day of Aprill, 1724, and was joined together in that honorable Estate of matrimony in ye presence of

John Sanders, Justice.

“John Corey.
“George Corey.
“Mary Hill.
“Peter Crandall.
“Mary Crandall.”

The use of the word smock here recalls the fact that in England these marriages were always called smock-marriages.

The Swedish traveller, Kalm, writing in 1748, tells of one Pennsylvania bridegroom who saved appearances by meeting the scantily clad widow half-way from her house to his own, and announcing formally that the wedding-garments which he thereupon presented to her were not given to her but were only lent to her for this occasion. This is much like the ancient custom of marriage investiture, still in existence in Eastern Hindostan.

Another husband who thus formally lent wedding-garments to a widow-bride was Major Moses Joy, who married Widow Hannah Ward in Newfane, Vt., in 1789. The widow stood in her shift, within a closet, and held out her hand through a diamond-shaped hole in the door to the Major, who had gallantly deposited the garments for Madam to don before appearing as a bride. In Vermont many similar marriages are recorded, the bride not being required to cross the highway. One of these unclad brides left the room by a window, and dressed on the upper rounds of a ladder, a somewhat difficult feat even for a “lightning-change artist.” In Maine the custom also prevailed. One half-frozen bride, on a winter’s night in February, was saved for a long and happy life by having the pitying minister, who was about to marry her, throw a coat over her as she stood in her shift on the king’s highway. In early New York, in Holland, in ancient Rhynland, this avoidance of debt-paying was accomplished in less annoying fashion by a widow’s appearing in borrowed clothing at her husband’s funeral, or laying a straw or key on the coffin and kicking it off.

The traveller, Gustavus Vasa, records a shift marriage which he saw in New York in 1784. A woman, clad only in her shift, appeared at the gallows just as an execution was about to take place, demanded the life of the criminal, and was then and there married to him. It is well known that in England criminals sentenced to death (usually for political offences) were rescued from the gallows by the appearance at the time and place of execution of women who claimed the right of marrying them, and thus saving their lives.

It has been asserted that these shift-marriages were but an ignorant folk-custom, and that there never was any law or reason for the belief that the observance procured immunity from payment of past debts. But it is plainly stated in many of these Narragansett certificates that it was “according to the law in such cases.” The marriages were certainly degrading in character, and were gone through with only for the express purpose of debt evasion, and they must have been successful. The chief actors in these Narragansett comedies were, from scant negative testimony of their life and the social position of their families, not necessarily of limited means. Any man of wealth might not, however, wish to pay the debts of his matrimonial “predecessor,” as the first husband is termed in one case.

And it should be remembered also that at the time these weddings took place there was nothing boorish in the community. Considering the necessary differences in the centuries, the “South County” was not nearly as “countrified,” to use a conventional term, then as now. Exeter has ever been sparsely settled, with many woodlands, meagre farms, and little wealth, though it had one church with a thousand members; but North Kingston had a thrifty and enterprising general population, with many men of wealth, and handsome houses. South Kingston, the nearest town-centre to the cross-roads, was settled by men of opulence and of polite culture. It was the richest town in the State of Rhode Island, paying, as late as 1780, double the taxes assigned to Newport and one-third more than Providence. The cross-roads, where the three towns meet, was not far from St. Paul’s Church, where the planters and their families gathered each Sunday, riding to it over the very highway where the shift-marriages took place.

As I sat on a fallen tree last summer at the lonely cross-roads, the scene of so many of these shift-marriages, the place, with its fairly tropical bloom, seemed a romantic spot for such a grotesquery; but the picture of the last of these benumbed brides, who, early in this century, clad only in a linen shift, on a February night—a New England February night—shivered across the frozen road to avoid the payment of some paltry debt, and the thought of the unspeakable husband who would let her go through such a mortifying and distressing ordeal, there seemed scant romance, and nothing but ignorant and sordid superstition.