Sharing Blankets

Matthew didn't own a suit, so he dressed in the same trousers and shirt Elizabeth had given him. Because Elizabeth had been married before, she wore a dress of off-white cotton.

Horace read the marriage service from the back of his Bible and then smiled when he introduced them as Pastor Martingale and his wife Elizabeth. There was a wedding reception at the church after the service with several cakes baked by the women of the town.

At supper that night, Matthew stood up and told Elizabeth he thought he'd read the Bible a little before going to bed. Elizabeth chuckled.

"Matthew, you've been through a war and you're afraid of your wedding night?"

Matthew grinned a little.

"Not afraid, just a little nervous, I guess."

Elizabeth put her arms around Matthew's neck and smiled.

"I'm not nervous. I've already slept beside you with my own blankets. I'm ready to share your blankets and to be your wife in body as well as in soul."

Their first night together was different than Matthew had thought it would be. He'd had no experience with women before, and though he understood what he was to do, he'd never actually done it.

Elizabeth had been married for only a week, but during that week, she'd learned what a man joining with a woman could be. Her husband had been a little clumsy, but once he'd taken her virginity, Elizabeth had begun to feel a pleasure in their joining, a tension that built steadily and was then released suddenly in waves that took her breath away. It had happened only twice during that week, but she had begun to understand what caused that tension and the release that left her breathless.

She sensed Matthew's inexperience, and gently guided his hands to the places she knew would begin the tension she'd felt before. That tension was building inside her as he stroked her breasts and then the softness between her thighs. She felt the tension building in her core and guided Matthew between her raised, open thighs.

His first thrust was tentative. Elizabeth stroked his back and whispered, "You won't hurt me, Matthew. I want you inside me."

Matthew gasped as he made the second stroke into Elizabeth's body, then gasped again when her body seemed to tighten around his manhood. When Elizabeth moaned, he quickly pulled out. Elizabeth stopped him before he could move from between her legs.

"Matthew, it feels good. Please don't stop."

Elizabeth moaned again when she felt Matthew slipping inside her, and her hips lurched up into that stroke. Matthew lost control then and quickly withdrew before plunging himself inside Elizabeth again. He felt her nails digging into his back as he began stroking in and out.

That sensation and the way Elizabeth had begun to breathe faster quickly took Matthew to a feeling of a tightening in his loins and then the feeling of seed racing up his shaft and into Elizabeth. He groaned as he made four more strokes, each causing his body to jerk uncontrollably. After the last, he held his weight with his arms until Elizabeth pulled him down on top of her.

She stroked his back and whispered, "Matthew, now I really am your wife."

If you visit the First United Methodist Church in Lawrence, Kansas today, you'll be visiting the third such United Methodist Church built in Lawrence. The original, and the one where Elizabeth was first married was built of wood. It somehow survived Quantrill's raid and was used as a morgue while the town's people were burying the dead from that raid.

The second church, built of brick, is the church where Elizabeth and Matthew were married, and the church where Matthew preached a sermon every Sunday for the next twenty-six years. It was built in 1865.

As Lawrence grew and prospered, so did the Methodist Church and by 1890, a new, larger church was needed. Matthew dedicated the current stone church building in 1891. Elizabeth was there, standing beside Matthew and holding his hand, the pose most people saw when they saw Matthew and Elizabeth together.

Their son, Mason Martingale was there with his family as well. Mason was a minister in Kansas City, but had brought his family by train to Lawrence for the event. Their daughter, Rachael, and her husband didn't make the dedication. Rachel was in the process of bringing Matthew and Elizabeth's third grandchild into the world.

All through those years and up until the turn of the century, Matthew had been a pastor on Sunday and a shopkeeper the rest of the week unless he was attending to the sick or doing other church business. He and Elizabeth continued to operate Mason's General Store in the same location, though the store increased in size as Lawrence grew.

When 1900 rolled around and Matthew turned sixty-five, he decided it was time for him to pass the pulpit to a younger man. That man was James Crider, a boy who grew up in Lawrence and graduated from the seminary in Kansas City. He was a pastor much liked by the younger members of the congregation and respected by all, but the older members would usually come to ask advice from Matthew about their troubles.

Matthew didn't live to see the outbreak of WWI. He passed away quietly in his sleep on January 10, 1905. Elizabeth lived another fifteen years, long enough to see both her grandsons come back from Europe alive and whole, and long enough to donate her father's Bible, the same Bible Matthew had carried to the pulpit all those years, to the Kansas State Museum.

You can see it there with the explanation of its history. It sits in a glass case with the handwritten notes of Mason Brown and Pastor Matthew Martingale sitting around it. The yellowed pages are opened to the same passage that now appears on a brass plaque on the front door of the current Methodist Church in Lawrence. Elizabeth and the congregation had put that plaque there after Matthew died, and is the same passage Matthew said inspired the rest of his life, James 1:2-4.

"My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing."