KinSource - Tale of the Week - Cupid Is Shy When Divorced Pair Make Up

KinSource

Minnesota Tales

The St. Paul Globe, February 13, 1903, p. 10

CUPID IS SHY WHEN DIVORCED PAIR MAKE UP

Alexander Flanders and His Wife Part, Fall in Love Again and Want to Remarry - Then Differences Arise and They Find Hudson the Only Place.

Married, divorced and remarried to the same woman is the story of the recent domestic troubles of Alexander Flanders, a bookkeeper, who recently came to St. Paul from Wisconsin to accept a position in a wholesale house in this city. Flanders returned to St. Paul yesterday from Hudson, Wis., accompanied by a bride in the person of a woman to whom he had once before been married. The story of the domestic life of Flanders is a peculiar one.

Three years ago he was married to a young woman in Door county, Wisconsin, but the domestic life of the two was not as pleasant as had been anticipated, and the wife brought suit for divorce. She charged cruel and inhuman treatment and desertion, and upon the showing made in court, was granted a divorce in Door county, Wisconsin, last September.

After the separation, both Mr. and Mrs. Flanders decided that a mistake had been made, and at a meeting between them, decided to forget the past and remarry. After reaching this conclusion, however, the couple found an obstacle in the nature of the Wisconsin divorce laws, which provide that a divorced party cannot marry within one year after having secured a divorce.

The Flanders were not willing to wait a year, so an application was made to Circuit Judge S. D. Hastings, of Door county, and upon the assurance of both parties that they were ready and willing to forgive and forget, Judge Hastings issued a permit to the couple for a marriage license.

Application was made in Door county for a second license, but regardless of the permit of the circuit judge the county clerk refused to issue a license on the ground that the parties had not been divorced for a period of one year.

Then Flanders came to St. Paul and applied for a license, bringing with him the permit of the Wisconsin judge, but the orders of the Wisconsin judge being of no effect in Minnesota, the license was refused, the Minnesota law requiring that parties shall have been divorced for a period of six months. Flanders was in [a] quandry as to what to do. Both he and his former wife were willing to remarry, and as a last resort communication was had with the clerk of courts at Hudson, Wis., who, when the situation was explained to him, stated that he would issue a license upon the presentation of the permit from Judge Hastings. Mr. and Mrs. Flanders went to Hastings Wednesday, secured a license and were remarried, returning to St. Paul yesterday afternoon.