Note 868 — Chapter XIV · OPTIONAL CIVIL OR ECCLESIASTICAL MARRIAGE IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

For these customs and others see Earle, op. cit., 60 ff.; and compare Vanderbilt, Social Customs of Flatbush, 149 ff.; Watson, Annals and Occurrences of New York City and State, 211-17 (written in 1828 regarding customs twelve years before the Revolution); Ostrander, History of the City of Brooklyn and King's County, I, 79-83; New York Hist. Coll., Fund Series, 1880, XIII, 355, where Rev. John Sharpe tells us that negroes are married merely by mutual consent without blessing of the church; and ibid., Second Series, II, 347-49, where courtship among the New York Indians is described.