04/30/2026
Happy 165th wedding anniversary to Ghent's Anna and Aaron Powell who included this radical statement in their marriage certificate:
"Aaron M. Powell, of Ghent, and Judith Anna Rice, of Worcester, Mass., on the last day of April, 1861, at the house of Townsend and Catherine Powell, in the town of Ghent, have assumed the relation of husband and wife.
Herewith we record our united protest against the inequality and injustice of the statutes of the civil code pertaining to marriage, which assigns to the wife a position of legal inferiority. The marriage contract is formed in ignorance, inequality, and injustice, in the making of which one of the parties becomes at once civilly dead and legally buried. The individuality of the wife is merged in the husband. Her personal and property rights are surrendered.
Against this inequality and injustice, this monstrous sacrifice of the birthright of every human soul baptized by Apostolic hands, as a holy sacrament and everlasting ordinance of the living God, we do protest."
‘Aaron M. Powell.
‘J. Anna Rice Powell.’
Signed and attested by thirty persons, and recorded in the office of the clerk of Columbia county July 25, 1861.”
