"Lots of them did that": desertion, bigamy, and marital fluidity in late-nineteenth-century America

Journal of Social History, Spring, 2004 by Beverly Schwartzberg

Introduction

In 1859, Caroline Dunkel married schoolteacher John Martin, whom she had known for two years. John was a black-haired, dark-complexioned man, as revealed in the small leather-framed tintype of him that Caroline saved. He enrolled in the service during the Civil War, and after mustering out prepared to work at a bookbindery in Pennsylvania. He went ahead of his wife, telling her "he was going to have me sel of [sell off] the things and come and move there. He left his soldiers clothes with me ... and went away and I never saw him again." John, apparently, had gone off to rendezvous with another woman, Mary Ellen Krant or Krone, who had done his washing and cooking during the war, and to whom he may have been married--bigamously--as John McAninch in 1863. Apparently he lived with Mary Ellen "as man and wife" until he died in 1878, while Caroline, retreating from the role of wife and returning to her role as daughter, moved to her father's house, where she remained as a family caretaker. (1)

The story of Caroline Martin is unremarkable, but quite remarkable is the way in which it has been passed down to us--through stories told in the records of the Civil War Pension Bureau. Although marriage was a legal contract with strict parameters that allowed no negotiation, thousands of American men and women did negotiate their marital status in practical, personal ways, outside of court-rooms. Their experiences demonstrate the ways husbands and wives forged--or found themselves forced into--alternative forms of family and household. The lives of Caroline, Mary Ellen, and John only begin to illustrate these choices. Theirs is a typical story in many regards.

Middle-class household ideology tends to dominate discussions of the "Victorian family." This article looks at the messier household and marriage patterns that underlay actual practice. Ideal marriages were lifelong, permanent, based in a home. But the economic realities of the late nineteenth century made such a model unreachable for many, and indeed, many working-class and middle-class families may not even have striven for the ideal. As historians of divorce have long noted, marriages could be bent or broken for many reasons: work, or lack of work, might cause men and women to migrate or leave their households for paid labor; domestic violence might force one partner to leave; a loss of love, or a new attraction, might create a desire for a new union; immigration or migration of a partner might mean that spouses were never reunited. Husbands abandoned wives, wives deserted husbands, and married folk living without their partners sometimes represented themselves as widowed or single and remarried. I call such patterns examples of "fluid marriage," for they demonstrate that the seemingly rigid marriage contract contained many escape clauses. This fluidity, which at first seems to suggest a cavalier disregard for marriage, was probably a better indicator of the high regard for and value of marriage in the late 1800s; indeed, as this article shows, some men and women married repeatedly even if the law did not allow them to do so. Fluid marriages bespoke a world where acceptance of marriage as a fundamental legal, social, and cultural institution was accompanied by a pragmatic flexibility that demonstrated both respect for marriage and a willingness to adapt households to meet need and fortune.

Identifying deserted, deserting, and otherwise separated husbands and wives is a difficult task. For some husbands or wives, there were few advantages to revealing they had been abandoned. Being deserted reduced social status; abandoned wives might qualify for charitable assistance, but single women and widows had higher social standing and more options, both economically and for remarriage. Personal shame led many others to hide their pasts, while others may have had no interest in remarriage. Perhaps Caroline Dunkel Martin found it easiest to remain in her father's home after being deceived and abandoned by her husband. Outside of requesting economic aid, one major reason for claiming to be deserted was to obtain a divorce, as many states did allow divorce on grounds of desertion. But some states made it almost impossible to obtain a divorce, and for the illiterate and the poor, the legal system presented serious obstacles. In no state could a couple obtain a divorce by mutual consent; the very scent of collusion was enough to cause a judge to dismiss any divorce filings where one party was not clearly at fault. Divorce, as Nancy Cott has pointed out, was a means to preserve the public good, not promote individual happiness. (2) Yet despite these legal restraints, stories like the Martins' demonstrate that marriage could have fluid boundaries rather than being a lifelong contract. Such marriages were rarely as short-lived as the Martins'. Many five-, ten-, or twenty-year unions ended with a separation, and, as nineteenth-century Americans clearly recognized, the separated spouses frequently remarried others.