John Gatchell married Sarah Cloutman, while she was clad only in her “shift,” or “smock,” in Lincoln County, Maine, in 1767,[94] and in accordance with the popular opinion that the creditors of the bride’s first husband could not follow her farther than the king’s highway, if she was married only in her “shift,” many “smock-marriages” occurred at York, Maine, as recorded in the early history of Wells and Kennebunkport. The wedding of the Widow Mary Bradley occurred while she was clad only in her “shift,” or under-garment, during the cold weather in the month of February, 1774; she went to meet the bridegroom, thus thinly clad and the minister found her with chattering teeth and shivering from the cold. Her groom had not been as thoughtful as the Pennsylvania bridegroom, in loaning her clothing for the occasion, so the gallant gentleman of the cloth kindly threw his cloak around the freezing bride, to protect her from the wintry blasts.[95] In Hall’s “History of Eastern Vermont,” there is a graphic account of the marriage of the Widow Lovejoy to Asa Averill. The widow was not even clad in her “shift,” or under-garment, but appeared at the ceremony, in a nude condition, hidden behind a curtain, in a recess of the chimney. Mr. William C. Prime, in his interesting book, “Along New England Roads,” gives an account of two such marriages that came under his observation. He describes how the widow Hannah Ward, of Newfane, Vermont, was married to Major Moses Joy, in 1789, while the bride, perfectly nude, stood in a closet. She held her hand out of a diamond shaped hole in the closet door to Joy, and the ceremony was thus performed, in the absence even of “smock or shift.”[96] Immediately after the ceremony, however, she appeared resplendent in her wedding garments, which the gallant Major had provided for her, in the closet. In the other marriage, according to this old custom, as described by Mr. Prime, the nude bride left her room by a window, at night and standing on the top rung of a high ladder, she donned her wedding garments and thus abandoned the old obligations of her widowhood.[97] One of the most curious variations of this custom, however, is the account given, by Gustavus Vassa, of a “smock-marriage” which occurred on the gallows, in New York, in 1784. A felon who had been sentenced to death was about to be hanged, when he was liberated to wed a woman clad only in her “shift.”[98]