BioM: Mitchell, Margaret (1968)

Contact: Dolores (Mohr) Kenyon
E-mail: dolores@wiclarkcountyhistory.org 

Surnames: Mitchell, Caldwell, Gaffney, Adams, Holiday

----Source: Clark County Press (Neillsville, Clark Co., WI) 9/26/1968

Mitchell, Margaret (Marriage - 19 September 1968)

A young mountain of official red tape was overcome here last Thursday to permit the marriage of Martin Caldwell, 76, and Margaret Mitchell, 59, both of Rt. 2, Owen.

They were married by Judge Richard F. Gaffney after he waived the usual five-day waiting period.

The fact is that Caldwell and his bride had waited much longer than five days. Much longer! The reason was that Caldwell had been previously married in Tennessee before he went into the army in 1916. He was divorced, he said, in 1917, following his service discharge.

But Caldwell had no proof of his divorce. He enlisted the aid of Dist. Atty Norman Saracoff, who wrote to the department of public health of the state of Tennessee at Nashville. Finally, the department wrote back that it could find no record of either Caldwell’s marriage or of his divorce.

There were a few more legalistic; but the red tape finally was cleared away and the 76 year-old Caldwell and Margaret Mitchell stood before the judge in his chambers while the ceremony was performed. The new Mrs. Caldwell was born in Mississippi on October 16, 1908; Caldwell in Tennessee on March 21, 1892.

Attending them during the ceremonies were Ruth and Harvey Adams, also of rural Owen.

The Caldwells were the second black couple married in the new courthouse in Neillsville. The first - and the first to whom a marriage license was issued - were the Rev. and Mrs. Holiday, also of rural Owen, back in 1965.