Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 191, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 August 1920 — WEIGHT MATTER OF MOMENT [ARTICLE]

WEIGHT MATTER OF MOMENT

These Two Bridegrooms Could Hardly Have Wished Their Loved Onoe to Be Lose Plump. In the romance of Boston history Is to be found a story which tells of the dowry Capt John Hull, master of the mint In the early days of Massachusetts, gave his daughter Hannah when she was married. The story runs that her father asked her, after the ceremony, to stand on one side of a scales while he placed bags of Pine Tree shillings on the ether, until the scales balanced. The coins then went to the daughter as a dowry. Hannah Hull became the wife of Judge Samuel Sewall, afterwards chief justice of the province and head of one of the most noted families of New England. There is a tradition that Joseph Richardson, an eminent Philadelphia merchant, went still further in the following century in estimating the worth of his daughter Sarah when she was to become a bride. Nicholas Wain won the hand of Richardson’s daughter a few years before the Revolution, whereupon Richardson said that he would not only say that Sarah was “worth her weight in gold,” hut would actually bestow the precious metal upon her to that equivalent Instead of placing silver coins on scales, as in the case of Captain Hull, Richardson rated on a higher scale of value, using gold instead.