MARRIAGE LICENSE. THE COMMONWEALTH OF KENTUCKY. TO ANY MINISTER OF THE GOSPEL, OR OTHER PERSON LEGALLY AUTHORIZED TO SOLEMNIZE MATRIMONY: YOU ARE HEREBY PERMITTED TO SOLEMNIZE THE RITES OF MATRIMONY BETWEEN SYLVESTER ANTONY [COL] AND ETTA RENICK [COL] THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE LAW HAVING BEEN COMPLIED WITH. WITNESS MY SIGNATURE AS CLERK OF THE WARREN COUNTY COURT, THIS 24TH DAY OF DEC. 1901

[Bowling Green?: KY], 1901. Printed typescript Certificate, 5-1/2" x 8-3/8," completed in manuscript. Signed in ink, "Wm. H. Edley C.W.C.C. By Frank J. Potter D. C." Text surrounded by decorative border. Light wear, old folds with a few tiny holes at fold corners [no text lost]. Very Good. Docketed on verso in ink manuscript: "Sylvester Antony and Etta Renick [Col]| 369."
[joined with] MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE. THIS IS TO CERTIFY, THAT ON THE 24TH DAY OF DECR 1901, THE RITES OF MARRIAGE WERE LEGALLY SOLEMNIZED BETWEEN SYLVESTER ANTONY (COL) AND ETTA RENICK (COL) AT MT. ANTHONY IN THE COUNTY OF WARREN IN THE PRESENCE OF JAMES T. PRUITT & J. N. JOHNSON. SIGNED. . ." Printed typescript Certificate, 5-1/2" x 8-3/8," completed in manuscript, text surrounded by decorative border. Very Good.

State laws in Kentucky prohibited legal marriages between Blacks and Mulattoes while enslaved and after the Civil War, until the Cohabitation Act of 1866 passed in Kentucky on February 14, 1866. The Act provided that "all negroes and mulattos may intermarry with each other in the same manner and under the same regulations that are provided by law for white persons." This allowed cohabitating Blacks to marry and their children to be declared legitimate if they paid a fifty-cent fee and recorded with the county clerk their intention to remain married. For an extra twenty-five cents, they could obtain a certificate. [Kentucky Historical Society Legislative History, website of Kentucky General Assembly.]
Warren County is in south central Kentucky; Bowling Green is the county seat. William H[enry] Edley [1860-1935] was a West Point cadet, served as Chief Deputy for the Circuit Court Clerk of Bowling Green, Adjutant in 3d Kentucky Regiment Infantry, and Warren County Court clerk for four years. He moved to Oklahoma, where he was elected delegate to the Oklahoma constitutional convention and served in several committees, then to Wyoming in 1908 where he was made receiver of public moneys at the Lander land office from 1913-1922 and ran for Democratic candidate for Assessor in 1922.
Frank J. Potter [1877-1939] was a Bowling Green farmer in his early years until he met the famous Edgar Cayce, the famed clairvoyant. who started out as a photographer. Cayce moved to Bowling Green in 1902 and worked for a bookstore owned by Potter's cousins. Potter met and partnered with Cayce in the purchase of a local photography studio in 1904. Cayce studied photography and worked as a photographer in Bowling Green until 1910, at which time he went into business with a few men to establish the Hopkinsville Psychic Reading Corporation. Potter went on to become a salesman with a local coal company and then a fire insurance company. He spent many years caring for his ailing sister and later his ailing mother, after which he had a nervous breakdown. He committed suicide by shooting himself in the head in a hotel room on New Year's Eve in 1939.
Sylvester Antony [a/k/a Anthony], born around 1878, married Etta Renick [1885-1913]. They had a daughter, Ivy Anthony, who died in November, 1919, at the age of 10 years old from pneumonia. They had two sons, Sherman and Anthony, the latter dying in infancy. The 1910 USFC lists Sylvester as single, working as a deck hand on a steamboat in Warren County. His single status can be explained by the fact that Etta's death certificate shows her as divorced at the time of her death in September, 1913, from typhoid. We did not find Sylvester Anthony listed on any further censuses, nor did we locate his death certificate. [Census and vital statistics records from Ancestry website.].