Eighty-one years ago today, on Tuesday, August 12, 1941, my maternal grandparents, Grover Brown and Millicent Tschudi, were married in Saint Louis, Missouri. But they lived in Louisville, Kentucky.
Why did they travel to St. Louis to get married?
Today the trip would take about 6 hours (279 miles) while
avoiding interstate highways. I imagine that it took much longer back then. Of
course, they could have flown (unlikely) or taken a train. But why?
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| Google Maps - Louisville to St. Louis without highways |
I want to believe that it was a romantic elopement. But who knows?
They did not need to get married because she was pregnant.
Their first child, Linda Lee Brown, was born nine and a half months after their marriage.
Did they elope because the families disapproved of the
marriage? Could be. Remember from the 1940
Census we learned that Grover had been unemployed for 2 years, and before
that he pumped gas. I could imagine that her father (Peter C. Tschudi) might
not have been too optimistic about Grover’s potential to provide for his daughter.
However, legally they did not need to get their parents’
permission to marry since she was 23 years old, and he was 21.
A reason they may have wanted to get married was the military draft. (But this doesn’t explain why they went to St. Louis.) Grover registered for the draft on July 1, 1941. Although the United States was not at war, the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 required all men between 21 and 36 years of age to register for the draft. On July 1, 1941, the second registration was held. All males who had reached 21 years of age since the first registration on October 16, 1940. As required, Grover registered for the draft in Louisville on July 1, 1941. At first married men were not drafted, which led to a marriage boom. 1
%20-%20US%20-%20Grover%20Brown.jpg) |
| Front of Draft Registration Card 2 |
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| Back of Draft Registration Card 2 |
My mother thought they may have selected St. Louis to marry
and to attend a fair (like the St. Louis
World’s Fair, but that was in 1904.) I can find nothing about any fairs in
St. Louis in 1941. The 1939/1940World’s Fair was in New York City, and it ended in October 1940. So, I
think we can rule that out.
Along that line, was it a destination wedding? Did
they go to St. Louis with some friends and/or family members? Often witnesses
were required to sign the marriage license or application and friends or family
would act as the witnesses. Sometimes these witnesses could provide some clues
in our research. Unfortunately, there are no witnesses were required by St.
Louis on the marriage documents. So, we don’t know if anyone was there with
them. I also looked at the marriage licenses issued the same day to look for
familiar names or couples from Louisville, but I found none. Thus, we cannot answer this question.
Read my post The Wedding of Grover Brown & Millicent Tschudi for details on their
marriage documents.
Could it have been to avoid restrictive marriage laws in
Kentucky? Kentucky had some restrictive marriage laws at the time, including a
waiting period between the application for a marriage license and its issuance.3
Thus many Kentuckians married in other states, like Indiana. I can find no
reason why they could not marry at home in Louisville, Kentucky. And if that
was the case, why didn’t they just cross the Ohio River to Indiana?
What do you think? Why do you think they traveled to St.
Louis to get married?
Please post your thoughts and comments below.
1 John W. Jefferies, World War II & The American Home Front: A National Historic Landmarks Theme Study: Part One, (Washington D.C.: National Park Service, 2007), page 21.
2 National Archives at St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri; WWII Draft Registration Cards for Kentucky, 10/16/1940-03/31/1947; Record Group: Records of the Selective Service System, 147; Box: 77
3
Dawn Mitchell, “Indiana was a scandalous marriage mill and Valentino took
advantage,” IndyStar, 4 July 2019, online archives (https://www.indystar.com/story/news/history/retroindy/2019/07/04/indiana-scandalous-marriage-mill-and-valentino-took-advantage-gretna-green-weddings/1621342001 : accessed 6 August 2022), para. 3.
Thank you for posting these! So interesting... I'd like to believe romantic elopement as well.
ReplyDeleteFaith,
DeleteI'm glad that you found this stuff interesting. Stay tuned for more stories about our interesting ancestors.
Thank you for your comment.
Thanks for the update. This is a nice collection of info I didn't know. I have pictures of Grover in a Navy uniform and family info that he served in the submarine service. I have never been able to confirm or reject the truth of this. Have you seen Uncle Pete Tschudi's service records along with his Bataan prisoner of war story?
ReplyDeleteThank you for sending to me Peter H. Tschudi's service record. He had a truly remarkable life and story. I look forward to digging into his life story and sharing it with everyone.
DeleteI have not been able to find any military records for Grover Brown, other than his draft registration card shown above. However, I haven't dug that deeply yet. I added "Search for Grover Brown military records" to my genealogy task list.
I had never heard anything about Grover being in the service before, and I always wondered how he got out of it since he was in his 20's during WWII. I always thought that maybe he got deferments because he was an only son, and he was married. We will see what the records say when I get to that task.
And I think, but I don’t know, that he would have enlisted to get into the Navy. I think that if you were drafted you would go into the Army.
It's my understanding mommy got him out of the Navy. He was also a fireman on a hook-and-ladder fire truck. How true that was I don't know. Only thing he was good at was drinking.
ReplyDeleteDo you remember coming up here on the train? Uncle Clyde worked on the (I think) B&O and got the fare cheaper. We had started school, so it had to be September. Doug was 1 so it would have been 1952. We had Bob the turtle in a cigar box. We had a 3-hour layover in Cincinatti. Poor mom with 4 little kids.
Mom,
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting this information.
One of my next topics is the Brown family’s time in Louisville before moving to Ohio. Now you have given me information about when the move took place.
So, you would have been 10, Uncle Pete 8, Aunt Julie 6 and Uncle Doug 1 and a half. Does that sound right?
Good sources of information are city directories, which provide information about where people lived and their occupations. So far, the only jobs that I saw for Grover in city directory listings were “Bar Tender”. But I have some more years to fill in. We will see if there is any confirmation on the fireman story.
Did Bob the Turtle survive the trip OK?
Bob the turtle has his very own story. He joined our family when my dad found him on one of his fishing times. He had the run of the house. Upstairs he crawled in the bathroom and somehow had his head in the door and someone shut the door on his head. He was ok. Another time he fell down the stairs. Once in North Olmsted, he didn't have the run of the house and was confined to the basement. We made sure he had food and water, but an animal got into the basement and killed him.
ReplyDeleteWhen we lived in North Olmsted, on the front porch was a "trap Door". We, being curious kids and knowing no fear, would climb down the steps to a little room. What the room was used for, I don't know. There was an opening up into a dirt tunnel. We started crawling through this tunnel, not knowing where it would lead. Luckily, it opened up in the garage. If an animal killed Bob, who knows what could have been in that tunnel. We had fun and survived.
ReplyDelete