“I am sorry for the words I have spoken.  This girl is the only child I have ever had to marry.  I cannot bear to see her go off in this way.  If you’ll come into the house and be married here, I will do the best I can for you.”

The good-natured David consented.  They alighted from their horses, and the bridal party entered the log hut.  The room was not large, and the uninvited guests thronged it and crowded around the door.  The justice of peace was sent for, and the nuptial knot was tied.

The wedding ceremonies on such occasions were sufficiently curious to be worthy of record.  They certainly were in very wide contrast with the pomp and splendor of nuptials in the palatial mansions of the present day.  A large party usually met at some appointed place, some mounted and others on foot, to escort the bridegroom to the house of the bride.  The horses were decorated with all sorts of caparisons, with ropes for bridles, with blankets or furs for saddles.  The men were dressed in deerskin moccasins, leather breeches, leggins, coarse hunting-shirts of all conceivable styles of material, and all homemade.

The women wore gowns of very coarse homespun and home-woven cloth, composed of linen and wool, and called linsey-woolsey, very coarse shoes, and sometimes with buckskin gloves of their own manufacture.  If any one chanced to have a ring or pretty buckle, it was a relic of former times.

There were no carriages, for there were no roads.  The narrow trail they traversed in single file was generally a mere horse-path, often so contracted in width that two horses could not pass along abreast.  As they marched along in straggling line, with shouts and jokes, and with the interchange of many gallant acts of rustic love-making between the coquettish maidens and the awkward swains, they encountered frequent obstacles on the way.  It was a part of the frolic for the young men to throw obstructions in their path, and thus to create surprises.  There were brooks to be forded.  Sometimes large trees were mischievously felled across the trail.  Grape-vines were tied across from tree to tree, to trip up the passers-by or to sweep off their caps.  It was a great joke for half a dozen young men to play Indian.  They would lie in ambuscade, and suddenly, as the procession was passing, would raise the war-whoop, discharge their guns, and raise shouts of laughter in view of the real or feigned consternation thus excited.

The maidens would of course shriek.  The frightened horses would spring aside.  The swains would gallantly rush to the rescue of their sweethearts.  When the party had arrived within about a mile of the house where the marriage ceremony was to take place, two of the most daring riders among the young men who had been previously selected for the purpose, set out on horseback on a race for “the bottle.”  The master of the house was expected to be standing at his door, with a jug of whiskey in his hand.  This was the prize which the victor in the race was to seize and take back in triumph to his companions.