Week 7: Love is in the air! #52Ancestors

This past week’s prompt was “Love.” While I’ve missed Valentine’s Day, love is ALWAYS something good to talk about.

I scoured my family tree for that one great love story I could tell: the star-crossed lovers fighting against all odds to be together. Hmmm. Should I write about my great-grandfather whose marriage to my great-grandmother was his third and took place 14 years after their first child was born? Not sure how romantic that was and given what a wild character he was, I think I’ll save him for later.

The story to share today is of my husband’s great-grandparents, Ella Mae Marlow and William Jordan Mills.

The family bible said that they were married on Christmas Day in 1884 in Vinita, which was then in the Indian Territory of Oklahoma.

Oklahoma? Really? What were they doing there?

Ella was born in Indiana in 1868, the youngest of seven children of a Congregational Minister. In 1880, twelve-year old Ella and her family are living in Brookline, Greene County, Missouri.[1]

William was born in Tennessee and his obituary claims that in 1882, he was a “helper” for the Frisco railroad in Rogers, Arkansas.[2]

According to Google Maps, Rogers and Brookline are about 80 miles away from each other (as the crow flies). Both are further away than that from Vinita.

My first question was could the family bible be wrong. For some years now, I’ve been on the hunt for any kind of record that supported this story. With the only clue I had (that they were married in Indian Territory) I had difficulty finding any marriage records for them. I thought maybe they met there, but I couldn’t find anything to support even that. The question was: if she was in Missouri and he in Arkansas, how could they have met and fallen in love?

Ponder, ponder. Muse, muse.

Given that he worked for a railroad, I guessed it was possible William traveled some along the Frisco route and met her in is travels. And, guess what? Brookline was “laid out” in 1871 when the railroad was extended to that point.[3] Ah-ha!

But why get married in Oklahoma?

Two weeks ago, I was in Oklahoma myself visiting my darling niece and her darling fiancé. I was invited to go wedding dress shopping, which was such a thrill for me! Anyway, during some down time, I was checking my email and noticed an update on some interesting newspapers, including the Indian Chieftain, published in Vinita, Indian Territory, Oklahoma (1882-1902). Holy cow! Fingers crossed, I searched for a wedding announcement for Ella and William. Lo and behold, there it was! “Mr. W.J. Mills and Miss Ella Marlow, of Rogers, Arkansas, who came in on the noon train and were married at the Frisco hotel.”[4]

I did some more research and found that Brother Haworth, a Baptist preacher, was the go-to guy for marriages in Vinita. And, I answered the question of “why” Vinita: Ella was sixteen and she did not need her parents’ permission to marry in Oklahoma.[5] Apparently, many couples came to the Frisco hotel in Vinita and sought out Brother Haworth to marry them disobeying their parents’ wishes. Could this be my star-crossed lovers fighting against all odds to be together? Maybe so! There is so much more to this story that I may never discover, but for now, I’m happy to have found evidence of their Christmas wedding.

[1]1880 U.S. Census, Greene, Missouri, population schedule, enumeration district (ED) 38, p. 127D (stamped), p. 16 (penned), dwelling not noted, family 135, R.T. Marlow; image Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com: accessed 19 February 2019); citing National Archives microfilm publication T9, roll 687.

[2]The St. Louis-San Francisco Railway was known as the Frisco. “W.J. Mills, Who Died at Nevada Monday,” unknown newspaper, digital copy held by author.

[3]Wikipedia (http://wikipedia.org), “Brookline, Missouri,” rev. 12:24, 27 July 2018.

[4]“More Happiness,” Indian Chieftain (Vinita, Indian Territory [Oklahoma]), 1 January 1885, p. 3, col. 2; image, Chronicling America (https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83025010/1885-01-01/ed-1/seq-3/#: accessed 20 January 2019). I did note that the announcement says they were both from Rogers. That could well be true and deserves from further research on my part.

[5] “Marriage and Divorce Laws,” The World Almanac and Encyclopedia, vol. 8 (January 1901): 241; image, Google Books (https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=6OwbAAAAIAAJ&pg=GBS.PA241 : accessed 19 February 2019), image 223. N.B. Under normal circumstances, I would have preferred to locate the applicable laws for the Oklahoma Indian Territory and Missouri. This does the trick in the short term.