If you have a minute. multiple marriages

[Peter_NB]

Hello. What was, for me, just a marriage, I recently had reason to revisit a name to see if I could find more information. I am not seeking info on this unless someone cares to comment, just thought it was interesting and wondering why ?

I was looking at a Clara Vibert, born 1921 Montreal. On the 29th Sept 1945 she married Reuben J Patton.
described as having been married once and now a widow. But as I scrolled the Ancestry page there he is again and marrying a Clara Boyer in 1942, he is now divorced and his colour is black. Quite a change from 1936 when he is said to be white and marries Anna Mae Gibbons. But he was black when he married Katherine Nicholson in 1930.

He is consistent in providing his mother's name and his occupation. My family line is with Clara Vibert, but maybe when I have nothing to do I will take a closer look at Mr Patton. At some point he was removed from the marriage to Clara Vibert, as our own archived material has Clara married to a Guy Girard.

Interesting fellow is Mr Patton.

[Lesley Robertson]

Assuming that there isn’t an outbreak of men with the same name, I have 2 thoughts - death certificates and locations... is he what’s often called a “Black “Widow”. Is he moving on, having deserted the previous bride? Divorces were expensive and not always easy. Bigamy might be cheaper if previous brides don’t know what happened to him! The declared colour switch sound like an attempt to cover his tracks....

[Peter_NB]

Hi Lesley. Me being the world #1 skeptic I just had to print out the marriage certificates. Unless there were 4 Reuben J Patton's with the same mother, declaring the approx same occupation and indicating he was born in Detroit I would bet a few English shillings on it being the same man. What really clinched it was assuming that the chances of 4 individuals having the same handwriting were pretty slim I would comfortably increase any wager to several gold sovereigns. As for the change of colour perhaps it was a mis-spoke :-)

I would put even more $$$'s on the fact that the ancestors that us gene-people seek to find, lived their lives not knowing that some bizzy bodies would one day be prying into every crook and nanny of their lives.....

[peanut]

Hi
Could there be two Reuben's I found a newspaper article dated 1967 about a Reuben J Patton
it seems he was the head of the Negro P,R (their words not mine) firm hired by Kodak, Kodak came under fire from civil rights movements, it was reported in the Amarillo news

Peanut

[Peter_NB]

Thank you for your interest. Born about same year 1907, with same mother and handwriting ? maybe ??

He was named after his father.

[Megan Roberts]

Some people just like marrying a lot, and not necessarily being 100% truthful:

One of my ancestral trails has been to try and connect the dots between all the “Gambolds” around the world, which was my mother’s family, as they are inter-connected, although there are some loose ends! That said there was one chap in America whose second wife has managed to set her own record for the number of husbands...

As far as I have been able to piece it together Mary Florence Baldock was born in 1883 in Indiana and married for the first time to Edward Gambold about 1908, and they divorced sometime around 1914.
No. 2 1915 she married as Florence Gambold
No. 3 1922 She admitted to 2 previous marriages but said that she was a widow, and I don’t think she was.
No. 4 1924 she married as Mary Florence Gambold. Claimed to have been widowed in 1914, thereby overlooking her divorce, & marriages nos. 2 & 3 and the fact that Edward Gambold was still alive.
No. 5 1929 She married as Mrs Mary F Gambold, and said that she had only been married once before and had been divorced in 1915 and that she was born in 1891.
No. 6 1939 Jan – filed for divorce in Aug, asking for $2,000 alimony and restoration of her former name “Florence Gambold”.
No. 7 1940
No. 8 1944 she married as Mary Florence Gambold. Said that she had been married once before and that had ended when her husband died.

When she died (committed suicide) in 1964 she had reverted to using Mary Florence Gambold and describing herself as a widow.

[Peter_NB]

That's a lot of husbandry training :-)