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Archiver > APG > 2007-12 > 1197243887


From: " Charles S. Mason, Jr." <>
Subject: Re: [APG] Elopement destinations
Date: Sun, 9 Dec 2007 15:44:47 -0800


I an sending this again. I think the first time I hit reply rather than reply to all. I did get a reply from "auntlizzie" but did not receive the message back myself. I think the information I have included may be helpful to others. Sorry if I am duplicating this to everyone.

Chuck

Elkton, Maryland has been a very popular destination during most of the
20th century and even into the 21st. My grandparents went to Elkton to
be married in January 1914. My grandmother was under age, 17 1/2 years.
She used her baptismal certificate as proof of age, but had changed the
year of birth to be a year earlier. It was apparent that they did not
closely examine the certificate because it is easy to see that it was
altered. I know this because I now have the altered certificate and you
can see that the part of the year was erased and the date changed in a
different shade of blue ink. She was not pregnant so there was not a
circumstance that the clerk might have overlooked the altered
certificate to help them out. Their first child was born sixteen months
after they were married.

My mother’s oldest sister was married in Elkton because she was under 21
in March 1933 and my grandfather would not give his permission for her
to marry in New Jersey. He told her she could wait until December when
she would turn 21. They did not want to wait so they went to Elkton.
Again her first child was not born until February 1935.

A number of my cousins in Philadelphia belonged to a small
non-denominational church that dose not believe in doctors. In
Pennsylvania they were required to have a blood test. So they went to
Elkton in the 1960s & 70s because Maryland did not require a blood test.
This I believe continued until sometime in the 1990s or early 2000s.

Most of my ancestors lived in southern New Jersey or Philadelphia. I
have found that a number of them went from NJ to Philadelphia or
Philadelphia to NJ to be married for no apparent reason. In many cases
neither was from the location that they went to be married and I have
not discovered any obvious reason for going to the locality where they
married. If I cannot find them in NJ or PA then I check Elkton, MD and
have found several of them married there.

If you do not find people marring were you expect them to marry, you
need to look at the marriage requirements there and in the surrounding
states. If the requirements were easier in another location, they may
have gone there to be married.

chuck Mason
Fairfax Co., VA


--- wrote:

From: "Aunt Lizzie's Trunk" <>
To:
Subject: [APG] Elopement destinations
Date: Fri, 07 Dec 2007 14:56:24 -0500

Does anyone have information about likely destinations for couples who
elope to get married? I'm particularly interested in the northeast
region of the US and in the time period of 1930. I'm sure there were
some states where the laws were more lax than others, where a couple
could get married more quickly than in their home state.





.

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