From Kalm’s Travels into North America we find this observation about marriage customs in the colonies:

“…There is a very peculiar diverting custom here, in regard to marrying. When a man dies, and leaves his widow in great poverty, or so that she cannot pay all the debts with what little she has left, and that, notwithstanding all that, there is a person who will marry her, she must be married in no other habit than her shift.

By that means, she leaves to the creditors of her deceased husband her clothes, and every thing which they find in the house. But she is not obliged to pay them anything more, because she left them all she was worth, even her clothes, keeping only a shift to cover her, which the laws of the country cannot refuse her. As soon as she is married, and no longer belongs to the deceased husband, she puts on the clothes which the second has given her.

The Swedish clergymen here have often been obliged to marry a woman in a dress which is so little expensive and so light.  This appears from the registers kept in the churches, and from the accounts given by the clergymen themselves. I have likewise often seen accounts of such marriages in the English Gazettes; which are printed in these colonies; and I particularly remember the following relation: A woman went, with no other dress than her shift, out of the house of her deceased husband to that of her bridegroom who met her half way with fine new clothes, and said, before all who were present, that he lent them to his bride; and put them on her with his own hands. It seems, he said that he lent the clothes, lest, if he had said he gave them, the creditors of the first husband should come, and take them from her; pretending, that she was looked upon as the relict of her first husband, before she was married to the second…”