Elkton's Originals

Like all States which permit hasty marriages at all hours, Maryland has a "Gretna Green"*--small Elkton just over the line from Delaware. In Elkton 3,500 to 4,000 marriages are performed annually, at an average $10 the couple. Elkton's best-known parsons are two retired Baptists. Rev. William R. Moon, about 80, is tall, scrawny, intersperses his talk with "thees" and "thous." calls himself the "Only Original Marrying Parson." Rev. Edward Minor, about 60. is short, dour. Signboards advertise Parson Moon and Parson Minor. Taximen meet all trains, conduct marriage-seekers to the courthouse, to a parson, to a hotel, charging a blanket fee (as much as the traffic will bear) for the whole. Last autumn the taximen attempted to put the two parsons on a monthly salary instead of paying them pro rata. Sexagenarian Minor objected. The taximen bought the house he was renting. Sexagenarian Minor claimed he had a two-year lease but they rough-&-tumbled him out, installed Octogenarian Moon in his place. But last week Sexagenarian Minor was back on the job, planning a big outdoor advertising campaign. Shrewd, he had set up shop in an Elkton hotel.

Shocked by all this, the Protestant Episcopal diocesan convention voted to petition the Maryland Legislature to fix a minimum 72-hr, period of notice for marriage licenses, to be waived in emergencies only by circuit or city judges.

* Original is in Scotland, on the border.

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