Historic Quaker wedding celebrated again - after 252 years

It took just 33 words and a moment of Quaker silence for William Boen to pledge himself in marriage, and 33 words more for his bride, Dido, to pledge herself to him.

"Friends," Boen declared in a fieldstone farmhouse in Burlington County 252 years ago, "I take this, my friend Dido, to be my spouse."

For all its apparent simplicity, however, the historic exchange of vows - reenacted Sunday at the old farmhouse in Westampton - had been no easy matter to arrange in colonial times.

The ceremony took place at Peachfield, the manor house on 120 acres that is today the headquarters of the New Jersey branch of the Society of Colonial Dames.

Dido, 26, with no last name, was a freed slave working as a house servant in Chesterfield, Burlington County. At 28, Boen was still a slave, but he had been promised his freedom when he turned 30.

They were in love and wanted to be married in the Quaker faith, to which Boen's masters belonged.

But in 1763, "the Quakers were not receptive to having African Americans join their faith," Loretta Kelly said in Peachfield's dining room as a small crowd gathered in the parlor for the reenactment.

Dressed in 18th-century Quaker garb - floor-length linen skirt and matching jacket, stiff, apron-like "stomacher," and white cotton cap - Kelly momentarily "became" Jane Burr, whose house it once was.

"But William Boen was a Quaker at heart," said Kelly, and the Burr family - Dido's former owners - was sympathetic to the young lovers' plight.

Boen's master, Moses Haines, believed his intelligent young slave man "had a soul that needed to be saved," Kelly said, so for several years, he had taken him to Quaker meetings in Mount Holly, where Boen sat in the rearmost pew.

Boen sometimes heard the preaching of John Woolman, a local business owner and famed abolitionist, and he warmed to the Quaker ideals of pacifism and the "inner light."

When Woolman learned the Mount Holly Society of Friends would not allow Boen and Dido to exchange vows in the meetinghouse, he persuaded his aunt and uncle, Jane and Joseph Burr, to permit the ceremony at Peachfield.

On July 3, 1763, Quakers and African Americans gathered in Peachfield's rustic parlor as the young couple stood before a 12-foot-wide hearth to exchange vows with Woolman officiating.

About 35 people watched Sunday as Jeff Macechak, education director of the Burlington County Historical Society, welcomed them dressed as Woolman.

Mark Ziegler-Thayer and Cora Kelly, both 17 and from Stratford, then entered the room - he first - and sat at a long bench before the hearth.

At "Woolman's" invitation, they rose, signed the marriage certificate, and recited the vows Dido and Boen likely spoke two and a half centuries ago.

"Friends, I take this, my friend Dido, to be my spouse, promising through divine assistance to be unto her a loving and faithful spouse, so long as we both on earth shall live," said Ziegler-Thayer, who wore a blue swallowtail coat with silver buttons, leggings, and a leather tricorn hat.

Cora Kelly, who wore a blue linen floor-length skirt with a blue cotton blouse and white cap, then recited the same vow to him, and the two sat in Quaker silence for about a minute before holding each other's hand and leaving the room.

A few witnesses then spoke, with minute-long Quaker silences in between. "In the eyes of God, they should be together," said one woman, who stood. "We offer our prayers for their health and happiness always."

The ceremony lasted about 12 minutes.

Most "witnesses" retired to the dining room for cake, cookies, and punch, and to sign a replica of the original wedding certificate.

"It's the first time we've done this reenactment," said Judith Perinchief, chairwoman of the society's museum properties. With this year the 350th anniversary of New Jersey's founding, she said, the state society has chosen themes of "diversity" for its programming in 2015.

The society, which acquired Peachfield in 1965, had long been aware of the Boen nuptials, Perinchief said, "and so when we asked ourselves, 'What should we do?' we said, 'This would be perfect.' "