Marriage in 1859 New York City

[tinnean]

The year is 1859, the place NYC. My character was seduced and abandoned by her wealthy suitor and thrown out of the house when her father realized the marriage he'd been counting on wasn't going to happen. (The suitor was of higher social standing, so the girl's family weren't able to insist the wedding take place.) And of course she's found

Comments

[alextiefling]

If she's episcopalian, why not have a religious ceremony? (The celebrant in that case would be a priest; 'reverend' is an adjective.)

[tinnean]

I would have gone this route, but wouldn't it have been necessary to read the banns? If there's a way to get around this, I'd be all for it.

[alextiefling]

OK, so I've just gone and researched this more fully. New York continued to recognise common-law marriages until 1902, and did not mandate licenses until later the same decade. So there would be nothing in civil law preventing your couple from getting married by any appropriate person. I believe an episcopalian priest would usually require either banns or a bishop's license to administer a marriage. Banns take three weeks, but a bishop's license is mostly governed by 'how fast can you get it in front of the bishop'. And I'm sure that some priests would be happy to celebrate 'irregular but valid' marriages on their own recognizance. (This used to happen in England prior to 1754; there are record books of couples who got married inside the Fleet Prison in London by real priests but without external approval.)

[tinnean]

This is perfect! Thank you.

I appreciate you researching this. May I ask what terms you used? Somehow, what seems logical to me gets me all kinds of strange results.

[alextiefling]

The civil law stuff came from many, many searches with terms like ' "New York" "marriage license" "19th century" '. The bit about bishops' licenses is personal knowledge of Anglicanism, and therefore may not be strictly right.

[tinnean]

Thank you! I'll need to keep in mind to use the century rather than the year. (which sometimes got me street addresses.)

[nuranar]

I'm having some difficulty understanding the first part of the scenario. New York wealthy society was incredibly proper and rigid in many ways. If this suitor is truly a wealthy man with the place in society that implies, his engagement would have been part of regular society news. (Also begging the question just how low in society *was* she and why he asked her to marry him in the first place.) And correspondingly, his jilting of her would be a rather shocking event. It was more acceptable for the woman to jilt the man than vice versa, although neither course of action was particularly commendable. And in addition, I'm not sure what kind of a father would throw her out; that's really extreme for pretty much any social class. Kept at home incommunicado, yes. Banished to a distant relative in the country, yes. Being thrown out into the street? Wow

[tinnean]

Thanks for commenting

[alextiefling]

Bear in mind that homosexuality as a distinct orientation wasn't a thing in the 1850s; it didn't become a thing even in German- and Latin-speaking intellectual circles until Karl Heinrich Ulrichs became the first person to 'come out', in about 1863. The term 'homosexual' (as opposed to Ulrichs' 'Urning') was coined by the (apparently straight) Austrian civil rights activist Karl Maria Kertbeny in 1869.

[tinnean]

Thanks for pointing that out. I'll make sure not to use the term.