Section 23:  A Friend's Wedding

In the spring of 1846 my friend, Thomas Sutton, made a great wedding and got married to Miss Anne Mahon of Pittsburgh. I had been on confidential terms with him and was posted on his courtship -- had at one time been with him at Pittsburgh just after the great fire in April, 1845, and noticed that he rarely arrived at the hotel before eleven o'clock P.M. I was notified that I would be counted on for first groomsman. I had no great confidence in my ability to grace a position of that kind, but had no hesitation in accepting the place. My old classmate, Wm. M. Stewart of Indiana, Pennsylvania, was to be the second groomsman; the third and fourth were friends of the Mahon family in Pittsburgh. My partner, whom I had never seen, was to be Miss Rebecca, a daughter of Dr. Herron of the First Church and Stewart's was Miss Rose Irvin of Pittsburgh. In June, a day or two before the wedding, Sutton and I went down to the St. Charles Hotel and established our headquarters. Stewart, John Sutton and his sister arrived the same evening. We all went out the night before the wedding and met our partners at the bride's father's and spent a pleasant evening cultivating the acquaintance of our partners and the ladies present. The bride's father was John D. Mahon, a member of the bar of some standing and a gentleman in manners and a very good talker. I had some acquaintance with him before. His daughters were educated, bright, fine looking young ladies, Miss Anne being the oldest.

We returned to the hotel under contract to appear the next evening in proper time to arrange for the ceremony. Stewart and I had chartered a carriage and driver to be for the exclusive use of ourselves and partners till the whole performance was finished. We had also fortified ourselves with expensive suits of clothing -- city made and cut according to the latest fashions, and we considered ourselves sufficiently dressed to appear in a city crowd.

On the eventful evening we took our partners and went out some 2 miles out 4th Street to Mr. Mahons, found the people beginning to assemble. Mr. Mahon asked me what arrangements had been made to bring out Dr. Herron. I told him Will Rose had agreed to attend to that. Rose was called and said he had so much to attend to he had totally forgotten it. Stewart and I went out and got into our carriage and told the driver to put his team to Dr. Herron's door in the quickest time he could make, and in a few minutes we were there and found the old gentleman waiting with hat and gloves on and we were back and ushered him into the house in a wonderfully short time.

We were then called upstairs and instructed in the details of the program. The doctor was placed in the corner of the parlor and a space cleared around him. Pair No. 4 were to lead the column downstairs and through the crowd to the Doctor's corner. The others were to follow in the order of their numbers, the bride and groom bringing up the rear. When No. 4 Pair stood in front of the Parson, they separated, and No. 3 moved in between them and separated, and so on till all had spread out like a fan with the bride and groom in the center in front of the Parson. In that position we all stood during the ceremony. Then kissing and congratulations were in order till everything was in confusion and we had lost our partners. A great many people were present, and though the parlor was large, when all were in there was not standing room without crowding.

In an hour or so we got into line again, reversing the order of march, and the bride and groom let into the refreshment room. There was a long table well loaded and beautifully ornamented with flowers, and after helping the bride and groom and my partner, I think I worked half an hour filling plates and handing them to the crowd that could not get to the table. After this the crowd scattered to the parlor, portico and to the walks and promenades around the house. The evening was beautiful with the moon shining, and till 12 o'clock M the many well dressed ladies and gentleman kept the house and grounds pretty lively and I suppose it was a good party.

I met some acquaintances, among others Mrs. Dr. Riddle -- a daughter of my old preceptor, Dr. Mathew Brown, with whom I had a pleasant talk about old College days. As I was walking around, Mrs. Irvin, a relation of the family, came to me and said she and I had been so busy helping others that we did not get enough to eat and took me back to the dining room -- no one then in it, but ourselves, and I enjoyed the little supper and to me was an enjoyable part of the party.

The carriages began to fill up and by midnight the guests had mostly gone. At 1 A.M. Stewart and I drove back to the hotel. Next morning we drove out and came in with the bridal party and saw the bride and groom on board a steam boat bound up the Monongahela to Brownsville. The bridal trip was to take in Washington, D. C., but as soon as the boat pulled out, we took our girls home and dismissed our carriage at the hotel and felt ourselves free men again. That night we took the canal boat after dark, John Sutton, Stewart and myself, and we sat out on deck till one or two o'clock in the morning. I was going east to visit my old home and at Apollo all my Indiana friends got off and I was alone. That night I smoked a cigar. For more than five years I had not tasted tobacco in any form. That night on deck of the boat I again tried a cigar and it went off as natural as life. As soon as my company left, I took a bunk and slept soundly to Johnstown.