Note 392 — Chapter XII · OBLIGATORY CIVIL MARRIAGE IN THE NEW ENGLAND COLONIES
Reading edition
The civil-marriage form is recognized by the code of 1650: see Trumbull, Blue Laws, 167; Cook, in Atlantic Monthly, LXI, 351; Sanford, Hist. of Conn., 125; and Hollister, Hist. of Conn., I, 438. By the code of 1673 no person is to solemnize marriages "but the Magistrates, or such other as the General Court shall Authorize in such places where no Magistrate is near": see the reprint of The Book of the General Laws of 1673 (Hartford, 1865), 46.