A Tangled Web of Domestic Relations

December 21, 2006 — Sam MB
From the Nauvoo Neighbor, Nov 1843.
December_2006_image002

I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry at this notice. Anyone want to come up with a backstory here? Something tells me Cyrus doesn’t know much about “just cause” or “provocation,” but maybe that’s just me.

Posted in Blogroll. 21 Comments »

21 Responses to “A Tangled Web of Domestic Relations”

  1. Ronan Says:
    December 21, 2006 at 9:35 am

    Sam,
    Has anyone written a Daily Life in Nauvoo type book?

  2. J. Stapley Says:
    December 21, 2006 at 9:51 am

    Black’s Membership of the Church 1830-1848 has very little information. Cyrus was baptized in 1842 but his parents were baptized a couple years before and received their temple ordinances in Nauvoo. Cyrus however didn’t go through the temple until 1874 (perhaps because he had just left his wife in Nauvoo? – his wife is listed as Susan Sucke). He originally hailed from Lancaster, PA.

  3. kris Says:
    December 21, 2006 at 10:46 am

    Sam, this is particularly interesting to me, as one of my major projects as a graduate student was focused upon ads for runaway female indentured servants/slaves and sometimes wives in colonial Virginia.

    It would seem that Cyrus’s wife has not left the community nor is he looking for her return per se. There is no physical description of her or her clothing. No reward for information about her. It is interesting to note that he feels he has the authority to forbid others to assist or trust her financially.

    No idea of the backstory, but as I think of it, I rarely (never) remember seeing any advertisements for runaway husbands. Perhaps that fact in itself reveals something about the structure of domesticity in antebellum America.

  4. Mark B. Says:
    December 21, 2006 at 10:54 am

    This reminds me of legal notices I saw in the Provo Daily Herald back in the 1960s. They would say something to the effect that the person would not be liable for any debts contracted by anyone but himself.

    I’ll leave it to the family law scholars to read us the black letter law on a husband’s obligations for the debts incurred by his wife, but I suspect that what Bro. Boley was up to was an attempt to keep the erstwhile Sis. Boley from running up a tab on his account.

  5. Mark B. Says:
    December 21, 2006 at 10:56 am

    I’d also guess that the “without just cause or provocation” is a legal mantra that the man had to recite in order to achieve the immunity from the debts that she would incur.

    Note also that he did not absolutely forbid people from harboring or trusting her. He simply forbade them from doing so on his account.

  6. bbell Says:
    December 21, 2006 at 11:11 am

    Heh heh,

    I know a couple of LDS guys who would like to remain married to their wives but would like to not be responsible for their wives spending/debts.

    Especially this time of year.

  7. Steve Evans Says:
    December 21, 2006 at 11:21 am

    better get movin’ bbell. The 1940s train left a long time ago.

  8. Mark B. Says:
    December 21, 2006 at 11:39 am

    Actually, Steve, my guess is that the odds on a husband’s escaping responsibility for debts run up by his wife are much better now than in those bad old days. If the law didn’t recognize the separate juridical existence of the wife, how could her debts not be his also?

    But in these liberated days, you’d likely have to show that the account was in fact a joint account, before sticking the husband for the wife’s shopping bill.

  9. Steve Evans Says:
    December 21, 2006 at 11:50 am

    Mark, do we need to resort to the courts to attribute one spouses’ shopping to another? A good ol’ Church Court would do the trick here — and no attorney’s fees!

  10. Susan M Says:
    December 21, 2006 at 11:55 am

    I love little glimpses like this into dead people’s lives. One of my ancestor’s daughters was an early settler in New Amsterdam, now New York, Maria de Trieux. She was a colorful character…banished from New Amsterdam for shady business dealings and selling alcohol to Indians. My favorite glimpse into her life is a document detailing the bastardy of one of her children:

    Acknowledgement of paternity of Maria
    Truax’s child by a man other than her
    husband (1642, New Amsterdam)

    I, the undersigned Pieter Wolphersen, hereby acknowledge for myself, my heirs and successors that this day, date underwritten, I have adopted, as I do hereby adopt, Aeltjem Pieters van Couwenhoven, my own daughter, whom I have begotten and procreated by Maria de Truy, promising therefore that from this date I shall do by the above-named, my daughter, as a god fearing father is bound and ought to do by his own legitimate daughter; therefore, I hereby discharge and release Cornelis Volckersen, husband and guardian of the aforesaid Maria de Truy, from all charges and responsibilities incidental to the bringing up of a child till she becomes of age; I, Pieter Wolphersen, promising to look after the child, to let her learn to read and to bring her up according to my means. Furthermore, if I do not beget any children by my present wife, the above named child shall be my rightful heiress and inheritrix, as if she were duly begotten in lawful wedlock, and if it happen that children be begotten by me and my wife, the above named Aeltjen Pieters shall receive, like the legitimate children on my side, a just child’s portion of all such goods, means and effects as it shall please the Lord God Almighty to bestow on me. Requesting that this may have effect before all courts, I have signed this without fraud in the presence of the subscribing witnesses hereto invited. Done, the 7th day of January 1642.

    This is x the mark of Pieter Wolphersen
    Jacob Couwenhoven
    Philippe du Trieux
    Acknowledged before me,
    Cornelis van Tienhoven, Secretary

    Nice to know my family has always been completely loony.

  11. kris Says:
    December 21, 2006 at 11:58 am

    Gentlemen and lawyers –

    I highly doubt this ad was placed because Mrs. Cyrus was running up a big bill at Smith’s Red Brick Store buying Christmas presents. :) Note that the husband’s first complaint is that she has left his bed and his board without any “just cause”.

    Also, while the ad may only describe legalistic financial issues, I can’t help but wonder how such a public statement would discredit a member of the community and how she would be treated.

  12. Justin Says:
    December 21, 2006 at 12:42 pm

    George Givens’ book on Nauvoo notes that Martha Boley responded with a public refutation of the charge in August 1844. Her notice read: “Cyrus Boley left his wife and fled to New Orleans and returned this Spring, refused to live with his wife, was tried by a Bishops Court and cut off from the Church. This information is given that the plaster may be made as large as the wound” (In Old Nauvoo: Everyday Life in the City of Joseph, p. 233).

    Holzapfel and Holzapfel, Women of Nauvoo notes:

    “Sabra Granger Gribble published the following in the local newspaper: ‘Whereas John Gribble has taken off my bed and board, [and] having had to pay his debts to this date: Notice is hereby given that I will pay no more debts of his contracting.’ [Nauvoo Neighbor, 21 May 1845]

    Sabra, who signed the notice ‘Sabra Granger,’ attempted to expose her husband’s false claim of abandonment and set the record straight. Her husband had filed a similar notice earlier.”

  13. Matt W. Says:
    December 21, 2006 at 12:48 pm

    Justin, you are amazing.

  14. Kevin Barney Says:
    December 21, 2006 at 1:00 pm

    I agree with Mark B. that such disclaimer of responsiblity for debt notices appear in newspaper classified sections even to this day. Whether they have any legal effect I do not know (I’m not a family lawyer).

    Divorce back in those days was often by self help without any formal intervention or decrees by the state.

  15. Mark B. Says:
    December 21, 2006 at 1:03 pm

    Where’s the looniness, Susan? Was it Ms. de Truy’s getting herself with child outside of the marriage bed? Maybe that’s a sign of a lusty disposition, but

    looniness

    ?

    Or was it in the child’s father acknowledgement of paternity? We may think him nuts to do that in an age where neither blood-typing nor DNA testing (and not even Maury Povich) were around to prove his part in the child’s birth. On the other hand, we could simply conclude that he was a stand-up guy, willing to pay the piper after he fiddled.

  16. Susan M Says:
    December 21, 2006 at 3:01 pm

    By “loony” I actually meant “adulterous, cheating criminals.”

  17. Julie M. Smith Says:
    December 21, 2006 at 4:39 pm

    “that the plaster may be made as large as the wound”

    That’s a great line.

  18. Sam MB Says:
    December 21, 2006 at 4:39 pm

    Thanks, Justin.
    I’m personally surprised in my research how often people were divorced simply by disappearing. People announcing new marriages in the paper to give the prior spouse notice, people like John C. Bennett just moving on, serially.
    I also think about prior injustices to women. I also imagine this Cyrus showing up on Jerry Spring to protest what a great husband he’s been in a grease-stained wife-beater undershirt and ultra-slicked but sparse hair.
    Ronan, I think there are and Justin cites them. Glen Leonard’s book is a good introduction to Nauvoo. there’s also an old BYU Studies book on material culture that I can’t find on my shelf right now but has some stuff like that.

    I’ve had a great time making my way through the Neighbor and the Wasp.

  19. Sam MB Says:
    December 21, 2006 at 4:40 pm

    re: 10, glad to find some honor in New York, even if it was a few centuries ago. a great story behind that i’m sure.

  20. manaen Says:
    December 21, 2006 at 5:11 pm

    17. “plaster as wide as the sore” also appears in “Miracle of Forgiveness”

    This thread reminds me of one of my favorite movie lines, in which a teenager tells her friend, “A thief took my Mom’s purse, but Dad didn’t report her credit cards as stolen because the thief is spending less than she was.”

  21. By Common Consent » Domestic sadness made public, Act 2 Says:
    February 7, 2007 at 9:51 pm

    [...] some of you will recall, we recently discussed the use of serial newspaper advertisements to avoid financial liability for an estranged wife in 1840s Nauvoo. I have discovered a few more of them, all fairly rote, as if [...]


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