Courting. Dating. Relationship. The words mean essentially
the same thing: the time before marriage. There was a time when women were
married off to enlarge a kingdom or cement foreign relations. Women were married
off to enlarge a farm or married off just to get rid of her feet from under the
family table. One less to feed meant more food for the others. Male children
were physically, thus economically, more important. Males carried on the family
name and inherited property. Females bore children, kept a household intact,
and were even known to pull plows when the family didn’t own a horse or oxen.
Deaths were so frequent following the earliest settling of
the East Coast that it was not unusual for an afternoon wedding to follow a morning
funeral. A widow was joined in marriage with the most recent widower. A woman
needed a man to provide for her, while the man needed a woman to do for him.
There was no courting. There was no time to mourn. The marriage following the
funeral was one of expedience.
As the American west opened, there was a shortage of women,
prompting men to run newspaper ads for wives. Widows and other single eastern
women in lower economic circumstances went west to find a husband. A family’s
prosperity and survival often depended on the marriage, and often, there was no
courtship.
Ancestry.com describes an ad appearing in an Arkansas
newspaper. As Ancestry pointed out, the husband-to-be wanted a woman who would
bring practical skills to the marriage. The ad? “Any gal that got a bed, calico
dress, coffee pot and skillet, knows how to cut out britches and can make a
hunting shirt, knows how to take care of children can have my services until
death do us part.” Ancestry did not say how many flocked to answer that ad.
Generations past, real courting included long conversations
and spending time with each other. Letters include such wording as “my friend” or
“your friend,” while Wikipedia tells us the courting friendship was the “idea
of being intimate friends with someone before becoming an intimate lover.”
The times spent in conversations might be followed with a
walk that included a chaperone. Time was spent together at social events. If
things went well, the man would ask for the woman’s hand in marriage, however
in the case of Henry Harkins and Lucy Eveland in Wolf River, it was an
elopement a few years following the first settling of the community that would
become Algoma.
The elopement was an interesting twist of events because the
two families were connected years before. Henry, or Capt. Hank, Harkins was courting
Abram and Almira Eveland's 15-year-old daughter, Lucy, while the Evelands were
still living in Racine. Because of Lucy's tender age, Mr. and Mrs. Eveland
discouraged the courtship and then forbid the marriage, but the young couple
was not dissuaded. By the spring of 1855, the Evelands had relocated to Wolf
River when Harkins, with David Youngs as his mate, sailed the Lucy Ann to
the hamlet. Lucy boarded, and the couple, with Dave as the chaperone, sailed
off to elope. Youngs built the fledgling community’s first pier and became the
town’s leading factor. The thing was, Dave was the foster son of the Evelands –
having been taken in at nine years old following the death of his mother - and
the brother-in-law of Hank, the brother of Dave’s late wife Amanda. One would
think the Evelands would have hit the ceiling when their 15-year-old daughter
ran off with their own Dave abetting the marriage. Adding to the the convoluted story, Henry Harkins was Abram Eveland's employee and was captain of the vessel Mr. Eveland named in honor of his daughter, Henry's heart throb. Dave was part owner of the boat. But it all worked out. Lucy
was legally married. What could her parents do? The seemed go with "If ya can't beat 'em, join 'em."
In today’s world, sleeping together and living together are
common. Such bedding was common during the country’s colonial days, but
not the way one would think. Most courting took place within a two-mile radius, the
distance one could easily walk. The cold of winter, depths of snow, and pitch-dark
nights made a difference. The man stayed the night and couples “bundled.” In that arrangement, the
couple would stay fully clothed while sharing a bed, sometimes with a bundling
board between them. Since homes were so cold, the bundling put the kibosh on any
hanky-panky while keeping the young couple warm. Besides that, the couple was
right under the noses of the girl’s parents.
Frequently, the groom was establishing himself and by the
time he married, he was 10 years or more older than the bride. Harriet Warner
was a child of 9 when her parents arrived in Wolf River on July 4, 1851. The
Warners were one of the three founding families. Onetime Lake Michigan mariner Abraham
Hall opened a store in 1852 and followed with a sawmill and then a gristmill. It
was a year following the opening of the grist mill that Hall married
Harriet who was nearly 25 years his junior. The ceremony took place at Harriet's grandmother’s home in Waukegan, Illinois, although the couple always lived in
what became Algoma.
Marriage between close cousins is generally not permitted,
however in the mid-1800s first cousins married. Surprisingly, Charles Darwin
married his first cousin Emma Wedgewood. Jesse James didn’t rush into anything
when he married his first cousin Zerelda Mimms after a 9-year courtship. Such relationships mattered to French Canadians well over 100 years before Darwin when this Blogger found "fourth degree bloodlines" (written in French) on ancestors' matrimonial contract.
The Depression made a difference in marriage and brought
long-term courtships. 1930 saw the lowest marriage rates in the U.S. while couples
were sometimes engaged for years as they worked to be self-supporting. The
beginning of World War ll saw marriages on-the-spur-of-the-moment. Women were
widows before they had a chance to be wives, and often the hasty marriages
resulted in divorces at the end of the war.
Courting ended in marriage, and marriages were social events. Tiny
Wolf River’s first notable social event was the marriage of Mary Yates to
Captain Charles Fellows in 1856. Mary's father, “the
courtly” Squire John L.V. Yates, performed the wedding ceremony. Other Record Herald history
says the wedding of Amine Parker and George Fowles was the first in Wolf River
during the winter of 1857 or 1858. They were occasions Harriet Warner Hall
remembered being celebrated with homemade beer and a fiddler.
It was courting that brought good ferry service to
Wolf River in the 1850s when Goodrich's three-masted barkentine Cleveland
served Green Bay, Kewaunee, and Wolf River. It’s a story that wraps up with the
Pabst beer dynasty. But how did that happen?
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When the Honorable D.A. Reed, Sturgeon Bay District
Attorney, was in Ahnapee courting, the paper informed readership. On wonders
why the Record felt compelled to point out that there was “nothing
improper” in the June 1874 visit. In March 1875, the Record called
attention to Rufus Wing, S.H. Sedgwick and George Wing of
Kewaunee who paid a visit to Ahnapee. The senior Wing and Sedgwick said they
were in town on legal business while the paper called the visit “paradoxical”
because it was known both were married men who were in town “a’ courting.” Since they were lawyers, the paper was having some fun. It wasn't women they were "courting." In
October 1881, the Record announced the names of Ahnapee men courting in
Kewaunee. It was no secret then because some of the men were widowers playing the field. Men of the era certainly needed to find a woman to “do” for them. Local women no doubt knew too much about them.
The Record reported in September 1880 that through
the power of Father Cipin, the long-expected marriage of Mary Meunier and
Carsten Smith was “consummated at the Catholic Church.” (Language was used
differently in those days.) According to the paper, townsfolk noticed that each
possessed “an affection for the other that can only be terminated with a union
of the hearts.” Perhaps the popular Smith was a bit shy and needed prodding to
get on with courting and the wedding.
Newspapers got into the courting patterns and October 1880
was no exception when papers brought scandal and sensationalism to the courting
and elopement news. There were stories in the Record, Enterprise, Chicago
Times, DePere News, and who knows where else. The papers said Kewaunee
County priest Fr. Phillip Crud and Miss Zoe Allard were the “principal
characters.” Tongues wagged when Miss Allard broke off her engagement at the
time Crud was leaving the area. In the end, Crud was in Cincinnati and Miss
Allard was in DePere with her father.
A few years later, the paper said there were hundreds of
women who can “thrum” a piano to one who could make a loaf of good bread. The
paper said men enjoy a good dinner more than music. When a man is courting, he
lives at home, and if he needs to travel, he can find good meals at a hotel or
“eating-house.” In a word to the wise, the paper felt even a lion could be tamed with good food.
In March 1886, the Record called attention to the empty-headed
boys who felt they were beyond boyhood and were dudes old enough for courting.
The “dudes” called on a neighbor girl who
welcomed them. It was a pleasant evening until her father thought it was time
for bed, but the boys failed to take the hint and over stayed. Just after midnight,
the boys were startled by an apparition in white, shaped like the ”old man”
carrying a club. Bidding a hasty retreat with the ghost in hot pursuit, the
boys got to the door, but it was locked. Seeing an open window, they went
through it. The last boy crawling through the window said the ghost’s club was “awfully
heavy and red hot besides.” More than a few fair maidens had an “old man” who
knew how to get rid of bothersome courters.
Three years later, an article concerned a young courting man who gave his young lady a lozenge to help relieve her cough. It didn’t work. The next day he received a note with a coat button in it. The note said he must have given her the wrong kind of lozenge, one which he might need. Obviously, the woman in the article wasn’t going to sew on his button. The same paper noted the men marrying widows because they were too lazy to court. At New Year’s Eve, 1899, posters were advertising a dance just before Valentine’s Day. Algoma’s Dan Tweedale planned to raffle a horse, cutter, and robes. As the Record said, the raffle presented a good chance to win a courting outfit.
Church should be a good place to meet a mate, but not all
were of that opinion. A July 1904 Enterprise told readership that
English Church officials had different views on courting and courting in
churches was getting controversial. Some felt since marriages were made in
heaven, courting should be allowed in church? Courting is the gate to
marriage as marriage is the gate to heaven.
There were churches that felt to put “Christianity into the
congregation” meant courting would follow the right lines. In churches where men
sat on one side and women on the other, the segregation stopped courting,
prompting the Free and Open Church Association to advocate for greater freedom
of sitting in church. When the Record pointed out in 1900 that a huge
source a matrimonial difficulty came from a lack of housekeeping knowledge by
the wives, the paper didn’t suggest such training as a pre-requisite to
courting.
Just as today, young people had things down to a science. Electric
lights were coming into being around the turn of 1900, and Algoma was the first
Peninsula community to have electric streetlights. A 1903 Record brought
up the problems with such lights that young people felt were no good for
courting purposes. One young man liked the kerosene lamps his girl took care
of. Her family’s piano light had a red shade that softened the light, which was
a plus. The girl was thinking ahead when she filled the lamp with just enough fuel
to burn to the time her folks went to bed. When the flame dimmed, it was 9:30.
The young man was heard to say, “That lamp, controlled by so charming a girl as
mine, is a bonanza.”
Kewaunee Farmers and Merchants State Bank used courting in their 1921 ads, saying a fellow’s grandfather went courting on horseback although the fellow’s dad thought a buggy was the height of style in his courting days. The bank went on to say that in 1921, a young man enjoyed taking his sweetheart out in a six-cylinder car while their children – if they married – would likely court behind a cloud bank in “a modern monoplane.” Banking progressed just as courting and in 2022, both are electronic, but forget the monoplane. The bank went on to ask if young men were handling their finances through a modern bank, or the antiquated ways of a grandfather. That question remains 100 years later.
Sources: An-An-api sebe: Where is the River?; Ahnapee
Record, Algoma Record Herald, Kewaunee Enterprise, Ancestry, Journal of Antiques online, Wikipedia. Postcard is from the Blogger's collection.
