Last night, Gary and I pulled out a box of photos.

They came from his godmother’s house. Stella’s been gone three years, and her husband, Arch, even longer.

Arch took family genealogy seriously. We’ve got a pile of his pre-computer research; he traced every line in both sides of their family carefully.

This photo caught my attention:

This is Mollie Johnston, Arch’s great-aunt. From everything I can find, Mollie was not a scandalous woman.

She was born in 1878 in Stanford, Kentucky. She found a job as a stenographer at Standard Oil in Louisville and eventually worked as secretary for the president of the company. Mollie was a faithful Methodist, boarded with friends in town, and lived to be 84.

So where’s the scandal?

It was her parents! Read on:

That’s right – elopement was all the rage in 1875 Kentucky. And apparently elopement caused that reporter to become enraged as well.

In case you had trouble reading the old type, here’s the text:

Elopements seem to be the “order of the day.” On Monday last, Mr. W. W. Johnson, who has for sometime been engaged in dealing out liquid damnation in our midst, eloped with Miss Alice Straub, the eldest daughter of Mr. Peter Straub, of Dooleyville. Wither they wended their lonely way, deponent saith, but of course they sought some “Gretna Green” where “two souls with but a single thought, two hearts could be allowed to beat as one” regardless of opposition. We are not in possession of a sufficient knowledge of the case, to assert that this young lady has “taken her ducks to a bad market,” but a life of eternal sunshine may not be expected by a pretty maiden of eighteen, who links he(r) destinies with a widower of double her own age and encumbered with three small children to begin with.

Good heavens.

That’s pretty strong stuff, certainly setting up the legally married couple for uncomfortable moments. Why would a newspaper write an opinion piece about an elopement?

Maybe this is the answer:

Ah yes, an advertiser’s opinion, in this case, became the newspaper’s editorial opinion. Because Peter the Tin Smith advertised in the paper each week. (By the way, the age difference was 13 years, not 18.)

Life worked out for the elopers. Groom William became a conductor for the L&N Railroad. The paper mentioned they often visited the bride’s parents from Tennessee. Life was good … until it wasn’t. At age 32, Alice Straub Johnston succumbed to blood poisoning.

But William kept the family together.

And then – it happened again!

This is too cute not to mention: Miss Fannie had a twin, Miss Minnie. They each played organ for a local church, Methodist and Baptist.

Life was never fully calm for the Straub family, it seems. A fire destroyed their uninsured home. A tornado in Louisville took the life of a woman with a similar name to Minnie, who was in the big city to learn the millinery trade. A few grandchildren died in infancy.

Oh, and Peter got arrested and charged $1 for allowing “a German” to tie a horse to his tree out by the street. It was a new law and Peter was the first to be charged.

The elopements of Alice and William followed by J.D. and Fannie certainly didn’t seem to cause any lasting damage. Although we only have a photo of Mollie, who did not marry – and presumably did not partake of liquid damnation – the many family members appear to have lived scandal-free lives.

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