Note 667 — Chapter XVIII · PROBLEMS OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY

Neither in England nor anywhere in the United States is a marriage declared void for want of parental consent. The leading case on the point is Parton v. Hervey, 1 Gray, 119. "Some years ago a young girl, only thirteen years of age, named Sarah Hervey, was enticed away from her widowed mother's house by a young fellow, named Parton, of bad character and dissolute habits, who by false representations as to the age of the girl, procured a marriage license, and persuaded a magistrate to formally marry them. She returned to the house of her mother who forbade the young man to see her. Upon his petition against the mother for writ of habeas corpus, the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth, after full consideration, ordered the young wife to be surrendered to the husband, and he bore her away in triumph.... The mother then brought suit against a confederate of the husband, who had aided in enticing away the girl and in practising the fraud upon the magistrate; but the mother again failed in her efforts to vindicate her rights to protect her daughter, since it distinctly appeared that the marriage was with the daughter's full and free consent."—Hervey v. Moseley (1856), 7 Gray, 449; as summarized by Bennett, "Uniformity in Mar. and Div. Laws," Am. Law Register, N. S., XXXV, 222.