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Gammerstang commented on the word shift marriage
- On February 22, 1719, a strange socioeconomic ritual was reenacted. According to Alice Morse Earle's Stagecoach and Tavern Days (1900), an odd American custom known as a "shift marriage," which absolved a widow of any previous debts incurred by her dead husband, was carefully observed at a certain crossroad. Justice George Hazard explained that a widow from South Kingston, Rhode Island, was remarried "after she had gone four times across the highway in only her shift with hair low, and no other clothing." Hazard also recorded that a scantily clad Narragansett widow was wed at midnight, "where four roads meet." This risqué practice, which was apparently honored by creditors as well, was carried on sporadically through much of the 18th century in New England and Pennsylvania.
April 22, 2018