BRUNSWICK COUNTY, N.C. — A 150-year-old marriage license that was found hidden inside a picture frame at a North Carolina thrift store will be given to the couple’s great-granddaughter.
Only the year, city and couple’s first names, William and Katey, were legible on the 19th-century paperwork an employee at Hope Chest Thrift Store found while cleaning a frame, WWAY reported.
Irene Cornish, who lives in upstate New York, found out the license belonged to her great-grandparents, William and Katherine DeWorth. The couple were married in 1875 in Bordentown, New Jersey. The certificate was found in a painting dating to 1889.
“This couple was married in New Jersey, and somehow the certificate found its way to a thrift store on Old Ocean Highway in Bolivia, North Carolina,” Karmen Smith, director of the thrift store, told WWAY.
Cornish was tracked and contacted by internet sleuths who used family history websites to connect the dots.
“I haven’t been on Ancestry in quite a few months,” Cornish told WWAY. “I actually went on to research a family member on the other side, and I happened to notice I had these messages.”
Cornish said her great-grandfather had built a Ferris wheel, which he rented to carnivals. He also worked as a ventriloquist and had his own fire-eating act, WWAY reported. She said her great-grandmother immigrated from Ireland and worked at a New Jersey hotel until she became a citizen.
Cornish said their old family homestead was in North Carolina and when an heir inherited it, they sold everything to a thrift shop. She plans to pick up the license soon and will frame it for display. She hopes one day to donate it to a museum.
“My mother passed away five years ago,” said Cornish. “I don’t have any family … immediate family in the area where I live. So I feel a little isolated at times. So it just felt comforting that these people are reaching out somehow. I am connected.”