Which Tarbell married Joseph and Emma?
Emma Hale Smith remembered going to Squire Tarbell’s to marry Joseph Smith. She preserved a surname and a title. Historians have supplied more than one given name.
A ceremony in South Bainbridge
Joseph Smith and Emma Hale married on January 18, 1827. An Afton local history names the magistrate as Thomas Tarbell. A regional study identifies Zachariah Tarble as a justice of the peace near the Stowell property. The spelling of the surname varies in the accounts, and a difference of spelling alone does not resolve which man officiated.
What evidence would settle it?
A published study of Chenango and Broome counties compares the local account naming Thomas with evidence for a Zechariah Tarble active in the same locality. A later writer’s confidence is worth tracing to its source. I would look for the contemporary return of the marriage, a dated justice’s docket, or another record connecting the ceremony to a particular officer. The inquiry belongs both to civil history and to the history of Mormon origins. Readers can examine the competing identifications without assigning the event to a man on the strength of a shared title.
The civil officer who performed a marriage belongs in a history of religious liberty as well as in the local register. My interest as an independent publisher is in allowing readers to see exactly where the historical identification becomes uncertain.