37 years ago today, my great grandmother Othelia married Ken Wallace. My great grandfather died six years before that. The second marriage was short-lived. I’d known about it only because my mom had mentioned Ken a couple of times, but all she said was that it didn’t last long. I was alive, but I don’t remember a bit of it.
One cousin saw the marriage listed on my genealogy site and that was the first time she’d known about the marriage. It was over before she was born less than three years later.
Ken’s relatives have little recollection even. I got a message from one of his descendants thanking me for posting the information. Ken had married a couple of women after his first wife died, but she didn’t have Othelia’s name. Just a photo of the two of them together.
Washington State has a treasure trove of documents available via the Washington Digital Archives. One of the things that is up there is a copy of the marriage certificate from Othelia and Ken’s marriage.
Also, I noticed my great grandmother made sure to spell Piteå (her place of birth) with a diacritic. In almost all documents here in America the umlaut is dropped. Officially, Piteå uses the ring above
diacritic, so I assume that the umlaut was a common way it was written. I am not familiar with the history of that diacritic.