Marriage License. Partly printed document completed in manuscript and signed by Reverend Henry Elbert. Baltimore, Maryland, 7 October 1865. 2 pages, 9 7/8 x 8 in.

A very scarce marriage license recording the union of two “colored" parishioners, William Hight and Louisa Johnson, in the months just after the cessation of hostilities and the passage of the 13th Amendment. 

The license was issued and signed by Rev. Henry Elbert (fl. 1860s) in October of 1865, minister in the first-ever Black Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Previously forbidden from being in Conference, Black ministers would leave the Methodist Episcopal Church to join with the African Methodist Episcopal Church (M.E.C.) or another “all-Black” conference. Then, in 1865, the M.E.C. formally approved Delaware and Washington, D.C. to form the first Black conferences from within the Methodist Episcopal Church. Henry Elbert pastored the foundational church in Baltimore.

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