BRIAN: Hey guys, I got a question for you. If you want to get married quick where do you go to these days?
PETER: Well, my daughter went to Las Vegas.
BRIAN: There you go. And I’ll bet when she drove in she was bombarded by these neon signs all advertising wedding chapels. Graceland Wedding Chapel, Chapel of Flowers, Wee Kirk o’the Heather Wedding Chapel. And a lot of them are open 24/7.
ED: You know, Peter but before Vegas was Vegas, the tiny town of Elkton, Maryland was the nation’s quickie wedding capital. And one of our producers, Nell Boeschenstein recently took a trip to Elkton, along with reporter Kelly Libby. And they visited one of the chapels where tens of thousands of couples got hitched all the way back in the 1920s and 30s. And they brought back this report.
FEMALE SPEAKER: And we have two young ladies from– what radio station again?
FEMALE SPEAKER: We’re from a history show, it’s a radio show. On the second floor of a small stone building along the main street in Elkton, Maryland, a bride stands in front of a full length mirror making sure her veil has not messed up her hair. How are you feeling?
AMANDA HERKNER: I’m a little nervous, butterflies.
FEMALE SPEAKER: Ever since she was little, Amanda Herkner has known the little wedding chapel is where she’d eventually tie the knot. A church or courthouse in her home state of Pennsylvania was never in the cards.
FEMALE SPEAKER: My mom and my step dad got married here. And my– their grandparents got married here and my aunt and my uncle got married here as well.
FEMALE SPEAKER: While family tradition may have been what brought her here, if you go back to the 1930s, the opposite would have been true. That was when couples flocked to Elkton to buck tradition, not honor it.
MIKE DIXON: The street is full of parked cars, and abuzz with people as the lights illuminate the night.
FEMALE SPEAKER: That’s Mike Dixon. He works for the Cecil County Historical society, and he’s showing us a photo of Elkton’s main drag in the 1930s. You can see the street glowing with signage, advertising chapels and ministers.
FEMALE SPEAKER: The story of Elkton’ boom days begins in the early years of the 20th century. As a generation of young people tested the limits of parental authority, quickie weddings were on the rise. In an effort to curtail the unsavory trend, state legislators had begun making couples wait at least 48 hours between applying for a marriage license and getting one. In 1913 Delaware became the latest in a string of Northeastern states to implement such a rule.
FEMALE SPEAKER: Those couples who couldn’t wait two days to get hitched saw a road around the new laws. That road led to Elkton, just five miles south of the Delaware state line. In Maryland there wasn’t a residency requirement or a waiting period.
MIKE DIXON: Of course Delaware is not that big so it wouldn’t generate the volume.
FEMALE SPEAKER: Again Mike Dixon.
MIKE DIXON: But it’s New York, New Jersey, Camden, Trenton, Philadelphia. So it was really geography that’s doing it to us. You know we’re the first place in Maryland that you could easily get to for the urban areas north of us, and then you can get married and you can get out of town.
FEMALE SPEAKER: Within a few years 15 chapels had set up shop along the town’s main strip. The number of wedding skyrocketed from 300, in 1913, to 36,000 in 1936. That’s more than 10 times the population of Elkton itself.
MIKE DIXON: So it’s enormous. And what it was doing was it was bringing– like some days there were 100 couples getting off that train. So the cab companies see a business opportunity, and I’m always amazed at how entrepreneurial they were.
FEMALE SPEAKER: Those cabs would bring couples to get a marriage license, then deliver them to a chapel, wait outside while the couple said their vows, and then return the Mr. And Mrs. In time to catch the afternoon train home. While the rest of the country struggled through the depression, business in Elkton was gangbusters. Of course not everybody was happy about the industry behind the town’s economic boom.
MIKE DIXON: If you were a [? state ?] old Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopal minister, and you’re looking at these fast marriages it’s not what you approve of. Certainly the Roman Catholic Church is not going to approve of these things. And they would do everything they could to kill it off, or regulate it, let me say regulate it.
FEMALE SPEAKER: Ordinance after ordinance was proposed to constrain the wedding trade. Some were targeted at the cab companies, other at the explosion of street signs pointing the way to the chapels. Local business leaders were able to defeat these laws. Unfortunately for them, there were larger factors at play.
ON FILM: Good morning I– stop that music.
FEMALE SPEAKER: This is a scene from the “Philadelphia Story” which came out 1940.
ON FILM: Dexter Dexter what next?
ON FILM: Two years ago I did you out of a wedding in this house by eloping to Maryland.
ON FILM: Two years ago?
FEMALE SPEAKER: Thanks to Elkton, “eloping to Maryland” had entered the cultural lexicon. The entire state was being tarred by the town’s tawdry reputation.
ON FILM: Which was very bad manors.
ON FILM: Which was very bad manors.
FEMALE SPEAKER: And so state lawmakers took matters into their own hands. In 1938 they passed a 48 hour waiting period.
MIKE DIXON: To quote the Evening Sun, I think they said a melancholy gloom descended over Elkton’s matrimonial magnates.
FEMALE SPEAKER: The town never really recovered. Marrying couples continued to come, but more out of nostalgia than need. Which brings us back to Amanda, the current day bride in Elkton.
FEMALE SPEAKER: Downstairs the wedding party and minister have taken their places. Within minutes the bride has made her entrance.
MALE SPEAKER: Will you, Charles, have this woman to be your lawful wedded wife, to live together in the covenant of marriage.
FEMALE SPEAKER: With that, Amanda’s family tradition continues. But there’s a decent chance it will end with her. The little wedding chapel is the last remaining chapel from Elkton’ heyday, and it’s for sale. So far its owners haven’t found a buyer willing to perform weddings there, which means that Elton’s matrimonial history may soon be reduced to just another historical marker on just another street in just another town off I-95.
PETER: That story comes to us from Nell Boeschenstein Kelly Libby.
BRIAN: We’re out of time for today’s show. But we’re eager to hear your thoughts on the history of marriage. Write them down and share them with us at backstoryradio.org. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter, BackStory radio is the handle.
ED: Now, on our website you’ll also find some other resources about the history of marriage, as well as our photos of Elkton’s chapels then and now. All of our past shows are there as well.
PETER: That’s at backstoryradio.org. Don’t be a stranger.
BRIAN: Today’s episode of BackStory was produced by Nell Boeschenstein, Jess Engebretson, Eric Mennel, and Allison Quantz. Jamal Milner is our technical director, Alan Chen is our intern, we had help from Chioke I’Anson, our senior producer is Tony Field, and BackStory’s executive producer is Andrew Wyndham.
BRIAN: Major support for BackStory is provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, the University of Virginia Weinstein Properties, an anonymous donor, and the History Channel, history made every day.
FEMALE SPEAKER: Peter Onuf and Brian Balogh are professors in the University of Virginia’s Corcoran Department of History, Ed Ayers is president and professor of History at the University of Richmond. BackStory was created by Andrew Wyndham for the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.