It is said that along the New Hampshire and upper Massachusetts coast, the groom was led to the bridal chamber clad in a brocaded night-gown. This may have occasionally taken place among the gentry, but I fancy brocaded night-gowns were not common wear among New England country folk. I have also seen it stated that the bridal chamber was invaded, and healths there were drunk and prayers offered. The only proof of this custom which I have found is the negative one which Judge Sewall gives when he states of his own wedding that "none came to us," after he and his elderly bride had retired. When the weddings of English noblemen of that period were attended by most indecorous observances, there is no reason to suppose that provincial and colonial weddings were entirely free from similar rude customs.
It was found necessary in 1651 to forbid all "mixt and unmixt" dancing at taverns on the occasion of weddings, abuses and disorders having arisen. But I fancy a people who would give an "ordination ball" would not long sit still at a wedding; and by the year 1769, at a wedding in New London, ninety-two jigs, fifty contra-dances, forty-three minuets, and seventeen hornpipes were danced, and the party broke up at quarter of one in the morning—at what time could it have begun?
Isolated communities retained for many years marriage customs derived or copied from similar customs in the "old country." Thus the settlers of Londonderry, New Hampshire—Scotch-Irish Presbyterians—celebrated a marriage with much noisy firing of guns, just as their ancestors in Ireland, when the Catholics had been forbidden the use of firearms, had ostentatiously paraded their privileged Protestant condition by firing off their guns and muskets at every celebration. A Londonderry wedding made a big noise in the world. After the formal publishing of the banns, guests were invited with much punctiliousness. The wedding day was suitably welcomed at daybreak by a discharge of musketry at both the bride's and the groom's house. At a given hour the bridegroom, accompanied by his male friends, started for the bride's home. Salutes were fired at every house passed on the road, and from each house pistols and guns gave an answering "God speed." Half way on the journey the noisy bridal party was met by the male friends of the bride, and another discharge of firearms rent the air. Each group of men then named a champion to "run for the bottle"—a direct survival of the ancient wedding sport known among the Scotch as "running for the bride-door," or "riding for the kail" or "for the broose"—a pot of spiced broth. The two New Hampshire champions ran at full speed or rode a dare-devil race over dangerous roads to the bride's house, the winner seized the beribboned bottle of rum provided for the contest, returned to the advancing bridal group, drank the bride's health, and passed the bottle. On reaching the bride's house an extra salute was fired, and the bridegroom with his party entered a room set aside for them. It was a matter of strict etiquette that none of the bride's friends should enter this room until the bride, led by the best man, advanced and stationed herself with her bridesmaid before the minister, while the best man stood behind the groom. When the time arrived for the marrying pair to join hands, each put the right hand behind the back, and the bridesmaid and the best man pulled off the wedding-gloves, taking care to finish their duty at precisely the same moment. At the end of the ceremony everyone kissed the bride, and more noisy firing of guns and drinking of New England rum ended the day.
In some communities still rougher horse-play than unexpected volleys of musketry was shown to the bridal party or to wedding guests. Great trees were felled across the bridle-paths, or grapevines were stretched across to hinder the free passage, and thus delay the bridal festivities.
Occasionally the wedding-bells did not ring smoothly. One Scotch-Irish lassie seized the convenient opportunity, when the rollicking company of her male friends had set out to meet the bridegroom, to mount a-pillion behind a young New Hampshire Lochinvar, and ride boldly off to a neighboring parson and marry the man of her choice. Such an unpublished marriage was known in New Hampshire as a "Flagg marriage," from one Parson Flagg, of some notoriety, of Chester, Vermont, whose house was a sort of Yankee Gretna Green; and such a marriage was made possible by the action of the government of New Hampshire in issuing marriage licenses at the price of two guineas each, as a means of increasing its income. Sometimes easy-going parsons kept a stock of these licenses on hand, ready for issue to eloping couples at a slightly advanced price. Such a marriage, without proper "publishing" in meeting, was not, however, deemed very reputable.
Madam Knight, travelling through Connecticut in 1704, wrote thus in her diary of Connecticut youth:
"They generally marry very young; the males oftener as I am told under twenty years than above; they generally make public weddings and have a way something singular in some of them; viz. just before joining hands the bridegroom quits the place, who is soon followed by the Bridesmen and, as it were, dragged back to duty, being the reverse to the former practice among us to steal Mistress Bride."
Poor-spirited creatures Connecticut maids must have been to endure meekly such an ungallant custom and such ungallant lovers.
The sport of stealing "Mistress Bride," a curious survival of the old savage bridals of many peoples, lingered long in the Connecticut valley. A company of young men, usually composed of slighted ones who had not been invited to the wedding, rushed in after the marriage ceremony, seized the bride, carried her to a waiting carriage, or lifted her up on a pillion, and rode to the country tavern. The groom with his friends followed, and usually redeemed the bride by furnishing a supper to the stealers. The last bride stolen in Hadley was Mrs. Job Marsh, in the year 1783. To this day, however, in certain localities in Rhode Island, the young men of the neighborhood invade the bridal chamber and pull the bride downstairs, and even out-of-doors, thus forcing the husband to follow to her rescue. If the room or house-door be locked against their invasion, the rough visitors break the lock.
In England throughout the eighteenth century the grotesque belief prevailed that if a widow were "married in Her Smock without any Clothes or Head Gier on," the husband would be exempt from paying any of his new wife's ante-nuptial debts; and many records of such debt-evading marriages appear. In New England, it was thought if the bride were married "in her shift on the king's highway," a creditor could follow her person no farther in pursuit of his debt. Many such eccentric "smock-marriages" took place, generally (with some regard for modesty) occurring in the evening. Later the bride was permitted to stand in a closet.