Note 380 — Chapter XII · OBLIGATORY CIVIL MARRIAGE IN THE NEW ENGLAND COLONIES
Reading edition
By Brigham, Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, IV, 283, 284. In general on civil marriage in New England see Lechford, Plain Dealing (Boston, 1867), 86, 87, or in 3 Mass. Hist. Coll., III, 94; Dunton, Life and Errors (1686), in 2 Mass. Hist. Coll., II; Mem. Hist. of Boston, I, 196; Read, in Coll. of Old Col. Hist. Soc., No. 2, 9; Friedberg, Eheschliessung, 470-78; Drake, Making of New England, 98; Oliver, Puritan Commonwealth, 415; Hildreth, Hist. of U. S., I, 192; Weeden, Ecc. and Soc. Hist. of New England, I, 217 ff., and Index; Cook, "Marriage Celebration in the Colonies," in Atlantic Monthly, LXI, 350 ff.; and especially the excellent chapter in Earle's Customs and Fashions of Old New England, 36-81.
Sewall's Diary, in 5 Mass. Hist. Coll., V, VI, VII; and his Letter Books, in 6 Mass. Hist. Coll., I, II, are a mine of information on social usages connected with dowers, courting, and wedlock. For very interesting records of marriages celebrated by magistrates at Salem in the seventeenth century see Hist. Coll. Essex. Inst., I, II.