he forming of the
children into companies, and the custom of marrying within a particular
company seemingly was an excellent plan; for it appears that as the
years passed the children grew toward each other; they learned each
other's likes and dislikes; they had become true helpmates long before
the wedding. As Mrs. Grant observes: "Love, undiminished by any rival
passion, and cherished by innocence and candor, was here fixed by the
power of early habit, and strengthened by similarity of education,
tastes, and attachments. Inconstancy, or even indifference among married
couples, was unheard of, even where there happened to be a considerable
disparity in point of intellect. The extreme affection they bore to
their mutual offspring was a bond that forever endeared them to each
other. Marriage in this colony was always early, very often happy. When
a man had a son, there was nothing to be expected with a daughter, but a
well brought-up female slave, and the furniture of the best
bedchamber...."[275]

_IX. Marriage in the South_

In colonial Virginia and South Carolina weddings were seldom, if ever,
performed by a magistrate; the public sentiment created by the Church of
England demanded the offices of a clergyman. Far more was made of a
wedding in these Southern colonies than in New England, and after the
return from the church, the guests often made the great mansion shake
with their merry-making. No aristocratic marriage would have been
complete without dancing and hearty refreshments, and many a new match
was made in celebrating a present one.

The old story of how the earlier settlers purchased their wives with
from one hundred twenty to one hundred fifty pounds of tobacco per
woman--a pound of sotweed for a pound of flesh,--is too well known to
need repetition here; suffice to say it did not become a custom. Nor is
there any reason to believe that marriages thus brought about were any
less happy than those resulting from prolonged courtships. These girls
were strong, healthy, moral women from crowded England, and they came
prepared to do their share toward making domestic life a success.
American books of history have said much about the so-called indented
women who promised for their ship fare from England to serve a certain
number of months or years on the Virginia plantations; but the early
records of the colonies really offer rather scant information. This was
but natural; for such women had but little in com