Rensselaer Republican, Volume 24, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 June 1892 — Marriages in Slave Times. [ARTICLE]

Marriages in Slave Times.

“How many times have you been married, George?" asked an Indianapolis reporter of an ancient darky. ,“As far as I can,remember now I have had thirty-four wives. I was married to a bright mulatto woman in Montgomery, Va., and tap had one child. But I was from them, and I have never seen nor heard from either of them since.”, “What kind of a ceremony did you have to go through?" “Bless you, we had no ceremony. When negroes got married the man’s friend held one end of a broomstick and the woman’s friend the other. The bridegroom would jump over it and the bride would follow suit, and then then they would kiss each other. “Then they were married and jollification began. So far as I cSn remember, I am the father of fifty-two children, but like my wives they were always taken away from me cn I from them. “One of my masters, George Oliver, tied my wife to, a tree and whipped her With a blacksnake in a terrible manner. I was right there, handcuffed, and could not help he* at all. “When I asked him not to whip her I was told to keep still or I would get a double dose. The last time I heard of Oliver he was a beggar, going from house to house to get something to eat. ” h «

It is computed that if the traffic of the city of London were to be dispatched by a procession of trains, each with the engine touching the preceding trains', as far as Liverpool and back, four hundred miles, the first return to London would find 214,000 persons waiting to start.