An Agnostic Marriage

1901

First Ceremony of Its Kind Performed in Cincinnati.

The much heralded marriage of agnostics, declared to be the first marriage of the kind to be celebrated, took place the other day in College hall, Young Men's Mercantile Library building, in Walnut street, when Frederick Federle, employed in a very modest capacity by the Pittsburg Coal company, and Miss Martha Seaman were married according to the pledges and rites prescribed by the new agnostic society of Cincinnati, of which Charles S. Sparks is the head.

At the conclusion of the agnostic Sunday school services the couple were made man and wife on the stage of the hall, which was decorated with the American colors and mottoes of the society, says the New York Times. Mr. Sparks acted as master of ceremonies. Mr. Federle and Miss Seaman repeated the pledges after Sparks, and acquiesced in them by spoken words and by nods. The voluminous pledges were in effect that they be frugal in habits, that the man at once insure his life for the benefit of the woman, that they avoid wrangling, and if they found in time they were not "mated" that they separate. The woman also repeated the words: "I will not bring children into the world not born of affection." Both promised to rear their children, should children be born, in the agnostic faith and after the teachings at the agnostic Sunday school.

Magistrate Alexander Roebling took the couple after they had taken the agnostic pledges and completed the ceremony, according to the civil law requirements as administered by magistrates. The magistrate, however, according to instructions from Mr. Sparks, did not use the word "obey" in his form of ceremony. After the magistrate Mr. Sparks again stepped to the front and in loud tones declared, "These who have thus bound themselves together in a marriage contract let no man or woman put asunder, or seek so to do under pain and penalties of dishonor and of the law."