marriage certificate of Elisabeth Wright and Rufus Wright

Marriage certificate, 3 Dec. 1863, filed with affidavit of Elisabeth Wright, 21 Aug. 1865, Letters & Orders Received, series 4180, Norfolk VA Assistant Subassistant Commissioner, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, & Abandoned Lands, Record Group 105, National Archives. Henry M. Turner, who married the couple, was chaplain of the regiment in which Rufus Wright served, the 1st U.S. Colored Infantry, which was organized in the District of Columbia in the spring of 1863. Apparently Wright met his future wife after joining the army, possibly while on duty in the Portsmouth, Virginia, area. He had enlisted at Mason's Island, Virginia, in July 1863, giving his residence as Edenton, North Carolina. At that time he was twenty-three years old and unmarried. (Service record of Rufus Wright, 1st USCI, Carded Records, Volunteer Organizations: Civil War, series 519, Adjutant General's Office, Record Group 94, National Archives.)

Published in The Black Military Experience, pp. 662–63, in Families and Freedom, p. 165, and in Freedom's Soldiers, p. 80.