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The recent Jukebox Genealogy prompted stories about weddings and marriages. The number of things that popped into my head was vast. You are all already exposed to me taking over the blog with my own stories, and I’m sure you don’t want me also filling the Jukebox with symbolic coins of my own symbolic songs. So I had to pick one.

Just one. This is very hard for me. Then I remembered that if I write one for the Jukebox and one for an “ad” for the Jukebox, I can choose two!

Still hard, but now I can share Thomas Shelton, the marrying squire. I’m not certain how he fits to my Shelton’s yet (or if he does, although the places and dates match up). So the blog is a perfect place to share this.  In the Jukebox I will share a story of serendipity.  What are you going to share there?  (note: Send your wedding or marriage or love stories to: [email protected])

Thomas Shelton: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/13412691/thomas-shelton

Thomas Shelton was born in 1776 in Stafford, Virginia and died in 1870 in Aberdeen, Ohio. Aberdeen is just over the river from Maysville, Kentucky and the marriage laws were quite different. Kentucky required a license, but Ohio did not. There was a ferry that went from one place to the other and it was called the Gretna Green. Scotland has a place with this name for the same reason- easy crossing to a place with easier laws.

So Squire Shelton set up shop in Aberdeen, OH in 1818 and performed over four thousand weddings in that time (without a license). After his death, Massie Beasley took over and, in his time, performed over twenty thousand weddings (without a license). This caused issues, not only child and grandchild legitimacy in property inheritance, but also for Civil War widows’ pensions, as a requirement was to provide proof of marriage. The Kentucky legislature had to pass a special act legalizing Shelton and Beasley’s weddings.

That above-mentioned ferry was instrumental (and also run by Squire Beasly’s son in later years). The squires would take them out on the Ohio River and marry them. “…so that neither state could certainly claim jurisdiction of the offense.”

From a newspaper article* in the News Journal (Wilmington, Ohio) on Thursday, January 17, 1867:
“…The secret of the old Squire’s success in the marrying business has been his entire disregard of law. For a fee of $5, he would, at any time, marry a couple without license, contrary to law without regard to decency or propriety; so that for half a century past Aberdeen has been the “Gretna Green” of both Ohio and Kentucky. And even from other States have often come parties and been married by this old man who could not get married anywhere else.”

As we venture through our genealogical sleuthing, it’s always important to remember the rules and laws of the time and place. And that you may have a relative who didn’t give a hoot about them.

* The News Journal (Wilmington, Ohio), 17 Jan 1867, p.2, col. 1, “The Oldest Justice”; database with images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 9 Aug 2025), cited at Newspapers.com Publisher Extra, (https://www.newspapers.com/image/878787425/?match=1&terms=marrying%20squire%20shelton)

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