Pioneer Methodist Missionary the Rev. Isaac Scarrit married young Edward G. Ament and Emily Ann Harris on May 1, 1832, and they became the first couple to be wed within what would, a decade later, become Kendall County.
From that time on, weddings multiplied as the frontier caught up to the lands along the Fox River here in northern Illinois, and then moved on ever-farther west until the nation’s boundaries reached the shores of the Pacific Ocean.
Rev. Scarritt arrived in Illinois from Connecticut in 1818, the year the U.S. Congress officially established the new state. In 1827, he settled in Edwardsville and, a year later, was given the task of dissolving the Methodists’ Fox River Mission. The joint Methodist-U.S. Government mission had been established on the Fox River at the mouth of Mission Creek in modern La Salle County just south of the current Kendall County line. After winding up the mission’s affairs, Scarritt moved with his family to what is today Will County’s DuPage Township, building his cabin near the fork in the DuPage River.
Scarritt was appointed the first justice of the peace in the area and was the closest authority to legally conduct the Ament-Harris marriage. The U.S. always has maintained a somewhat curious official attitude toward marriage. It has been considered a binding legal contract between two people (and, by association, their families). So, unlike births and deaths, marriage records have been carefully kept. A legal marriage conducted by a justice of the peace or other officer of the court does not need a religious blessing to be legal. Nor does a religious wedding conducted by a minister or priest need to be blessed by an officer of the government. Both are considered to be legal unions in the eyes of Illinois law.
So with Edward and Emily Ann’s marriage conducted by Isaac Scarritt, who was both a Methodist minister and a justice of the peace, their union was doubly safe.
Just a few days after the young couple were married, the Black Hawk War broke out, and all the settlers in the Fox, DuPage and DesPlaines river valleys fled for their lives. Those on the northern reaches of the streams headed first to the cabin of Stephen Beggs, another Methodist missionary making his home at modern Plainfield, and those on the southern reaches of the rivers getting to Ottawa as quickly as possible.
In an interesting note on the living conditions of those early settlers on the Illinois prairie, Scarritt left his claim so quickly he didn’t have time to grab a pair of shoes, suggesting a lot of settlers, even prominent ones, went barefoot in warmer weather to save wear and tear on expensive footwear. The tradition is that when Scarritt eventually got to Chicago’s Fort Dearborn and safety, he was asked to preach a Sunday sermon for which he had to borrow a pair of shoes to avoid the embarrassment of speaking to the crowd barefoot.
As for Edward and Emily Ann’s marriage, early Kendall County historian the Rev. E.W. Hicks dryly reported “… they took their wedding trip two weeks afterward, when they fled from the Indians.”
And then there was the no less interesting wedding when early Montgomery settler William T. Elliott decided to marry the lovely Rebecca Pearce, daughter of Elijah Pearce, a member of the numerous extended Pearce family that also were the first settlers in Oswego Township.
Seventeen-year-old Rebecca was more than willing to marry Elliott, a 19-year-old go-getter. But her father, when asked, was not yet willing to let the young lady leave his household. At that time, 1834, neither Kane nor Kendall County had been established, and the nearest place to get legally married was Ottawa. So Elliott walked about 40 miles to Ottawa where the county clerk told him that since Rebecca was only 17, the bans would have to be announced in a church for two weeks before a marriage license could be issued.
With no churches yet in the Fox Valley, Elliott despondently trudged back upriver to Montgomery. But shortly before he reached his cabin, he encountered the Rev. N.C. Clark, one of the region’s earliest Congregational ministers, known by one and all as “the kindly Father Clark.” After hearing Elliott’s tale of woe, Rev. Clark suggested that on Sunday Elliott come to the Naperville cabin where Clark’s nascent congregation was meeting and announce the bans. Rev. Clark said he’d make sure the second announcement was made.
In the meantime, Elijah Pearce had heard that the bans had been announced over in Naperville, but was under the impression they’d only been announced once. Thinking he had an entire week to go over to Naperville to protest against the second reading – which by then had already taken place – Pearce headed into Chicago for supplies. Meanwhile, Elliott hustled back to Ottawa, obtained the marriage license from the La Salle County clerk and raced back upriver to Montgomery, where Rev. Clark happily married the couple.
Elijah was reportedly pretty upset when he got back from Chicago to find his daughter was now Mrs. Elliott, but after a night’s sleep, he decided maybe it wasn’t the worst thing in the world to happen. And thereby on Aug. 3, 1835, William and Rebecca’s marriage became the first in what eventually became Kane County’s Aurora Township.
Over the next several decades, weddings became much less exciting, with no Indian wars to cope with and a much shorter walk to the county seat to get a license. Church weddings gradually became more popular, although marriages at home and in church parsonages seem to predominate until after World War II when more elaborate marriages became the norm.
These days, “destination weddings” seem to be all the rage, with people dragging friends and relatives all over the country and even to foreign climes to witness two people getting hitched for better or worse. The good news is at least most of those couples won’t spend their honeymoons fleeing to the nearest fort.
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