Marriage Authorization for Hester Ann Dally and Edward H. Tyler, 30 October 18371
I hereby authorize the clerk of the county commissioner’s court of Sangamon county to issue a license authorizing any legally qualified person to marry Edward H. Tyler to my daughter Hester Ann Dally.2
Oct 30 1837Crawford B Dally1Abraham Lincoln wrote the text of the authorization, the date, and the attestation,
and signed his name. Crawford Dally signed his own name.
2Edward H. Tyler and Hester Ann Dally married in Sangamon County on November 2, 1837.
Dally is listed as “Dalby” in state marriage records.
Illinois law allowed males over the age of seventeen and females over the age of fourteen
to be joined in marriage. However, only men over the age of twenty-one and women
over the age of seventeen could obtain marriage licenses without parental consent.
Men between the ages of seventeen and twenty and women between the ages of fourteen
and seventeen could only obtain marriage licenses with the consent of their respective
fathers or, if one or both of the fathers were dead or incapacitated, their mothers
or guardians. In addition, persons who had not published their intention to marry
for two weeks previous to the marriage were required to get a license from the county
commissioners’ court of their respective county.
Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, Sangamon County, 2 November 1837, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; “An
Act concerning Marriages,” 14 February 1827, Revised Laws of Illinois (1827), 288-90; Daniel W. Stowell, et al., eds., The Papers of Abraham Lincoln: Legal Documents and Cases (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008), 4:197-98.
Handwritten Document Signed, 1 page(s), Meisei University (Tokyo, Japan).