Note 833 — Chapter XIV · OPTIONAL CIVIL OR ECCLESIASTICAL MARRIAGE IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

Before the vice-director on the Delaware: Fernow, Doc. Rel. to Col. Hist. of N. Y., XII, 149, 150.

Here is a somewhat more elaborate contract in which one party is a widower:

"In the name of the Lord Amen, be it known by the contents of this present instrument, that in the year sixteen hundred and sixty-three the eighteenth day of May, appeared before me, Johannes La Montagne in the service of, etc., Meyndert Frederickse [Smith], widower of the late Cataryna Burger, who declares in the presence of the aforesaid witnesses, that for God's honor he has contracted a future marriage with Pietertien Teunise, spinster (jonge dochter), and before the consummation of the same, he, the subscriber, assents to the following conditions, firstly, that the aforesaid betrothed persons, for the maintenance of said marriage, will collect and bring together, all such existing estates and effects of whatever nature; in whatever place, and with whatever persons, the same may be lying or deposited, nothing excepted, which each now has and posesses, to be by them possesed in common, according to the law of our Fatherland, except that out of the bridegroom's estate, to-wit, from the estate left by Caterina Burger deceased, be reserved the sum of eight hundred guilders payable in beavers, for the children left by her; to wit Frederick Meyndersen aged six years, and Burgert Meyndersen aged three years, being their maternal (matrimonial) inheritance; moreover said married persons shall be holden to bring up said children in the fear of the Lord, to teach them to read and write in the schools, to maintain them in food and clothing till their majority or married state, without diminishing their maternal estate, which the subscriber promises without craft or guile, and for the same binding his person and estate, real and personal, present and future, nothing excepted, subject to all laws and judges." In the presence of the children's guardians and the "orphan master."—Munsell's Collections on the Hist. of Albany, IV, 321. For similar contracts see ibid., 311 (Sept. 23, 1662), 345.