After 1870, relatively few Midwestern Friends "married in meeting." Your grandparents were typical in getting a license and being married by a minister or justice of the peace. What would have been unusual would have been to take out a marriage license and then marry in the traditional Quaker manner. Tom Hamm >As a note, my grandfather Exum J. Hall and grandmother Anna Jane >Swaim were Quakers in Parke County, Indiana who married on October >27 1887. They obtained a marriage license and it was recorded. I >have this marriage license. >Hubert Hall > >Thomas Hamm <tomh@earlham.edu> wrote: > >I'll add a bit to Jeff Palmer's good response to this question. >State marriage license laws varied considerably until the early >twentieth century. South Carolina, for example, did not require >marriage licenses until after 1900. > >States that required marriage licenses and also had Quaker >populations exempted Friends from such requirements until after 1900. >In Indiana, for example, Quakers did not have to obtain marriage >licenses or register their marriages with county clerks until 1927. >It appears that at times, however, monthly meetings did report their >marriages to civil authorities. I'm told that some Quaker marriages >conducted under the care of Middleton Monthly Meeting are recorded in >the civil records of Columbiana County, Ohio. My sense is that this >is exceptional. > >Tom Hamm > >