A widely practiced 19th-Century custom in which newly married couples were harrassed by friends. "No matter how simple the wedding,"  Rose Taylor recalled in 1945, "a charivari at the bride's home was in order a day or two before the wedding. A band of young folks equipped with tin pans, kettles, tin horns, a drum and an accordion produced the quantity and quality of noise they wanted. They continued the serenade until the bride's family served them food and drink, and then left singing loud and long." In fact, a charivari, or shivaree, was more often performed late on the couple's wedding night, long after they had retired. In some towns, entire families made the loudest possible racket with everything from cow bells to buzz saws until the newlyweds appeared at their door. In 1850, a Monroe charivari "was said to have been good , after its kind, ending with the entrance of three goats at the window of the bride's parlor." The ceremony was not always well-received. In 1829, 16 people were arrested for shivaree shenanigans in Platteville, and on July 1, 1910, the Stoughton Weekly Courier-Hub bore the sad headline, "Bridegroom's Bullet Interrupts Charivari." Murders by angry bridegrooms were also recorded at shivarees in Whitewater in 1858 and in rural Cadiz in 1871.

Taylor, H. J., Mrs. [Rose Schuster Taylor]. "Peter Schuster: Dane County farmer (III)." Wisconsin Magazine Of History. Vol. 29, no. 1 (1945-1946): 73; Madison Democrat, Spet. 5, 1915; NewspaperArchive.com

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