Wednesday Wednesdays Zion Family Southwest Virginia Colonial Times

Tonight on ancestry I found 3 of my Zion ancestors listed in the Annals of Southwest Virginia.

Date                    Groom                                      Bride                                                Minister

1789 Nov 3       Zion John              4th great grandfather     Lucy MacCormack       John Frost

1811 Mar 11      Zion Jacob            4th great uncle               Caty Fleenor             Charles Pennington

1818 Aug 27     Zion McCormack 3rd great grandfather      Mary Gobble              David Jesse



I was wondering what the marriage customs would be for my ancestors in colonial America

I found an excerpt from an article by historian Alice Morse Earle in the Journal of American Folklore (April June 1893).

The bride and groom and bridal party walked a little procession to the meeting house on the Sabbath following the marriage.  We read in Sewall diary of a Sewall bride thus coming out  or walking out bride , as it was called in Newburyport Cotton Mather thought it expedient to thus make public with due dignity the marriage.  In some communities the attention of the interested public was further drawn to the new married couple in what seems to us a very comic fashion.  On the Sabbath following the wedding, the gaily dressed bride and groom occupied a prominent seat in the gallery of the meeting house , and in the middle of the sermon they rose and slowly turned around to display complacently on every side their wedding finery.

Other customs were just before joining hands the Bridegroom quits the place , who is soon followed by the Brides men and , as it were, dragged back to duty.

Did the bride throw a stocking, was there drinking and dancing after the wedding.

I wish I could travel back in time to see where they married , what they wore and what the customs were for the Zions in colonial Virginia.