Folkway #4 - Marriage

So, what was marriage like for Central Florida's pioneers?

As noted in yesterday's post, the idealized family structure in the pioneer era was led by a married couple.  So, the institution of marriage was very important, even the key to survival on the frontier.

Pioneers of both genders were encouraged to marry as soon as soon as it was economically feasible for them to establish their own household.  For young men, this was generally when they were in their early 20's.  For young women, this was generally in their late teens.  But, examination of local 19th century marriage records shows some girls were married when they were only 14 years of age.

Wedding ceremonies varied depending on the couple's economic and geographic circumstances.  Church ceremonies were considered the ideal, but often there were not actual church structures within easy travel.  So, many ceremonies were conducted by an itinerant preacher in a relative's home or at some scenic outdoor locale.

As with barn raisings and funerals, weddings were a magnet for the sparse population--an opportunity to be taken advantage of, not just for the ceremony itself.  Guests might expect to find their own future spouses.  Business transactions could be made.  News and gossip could be exchanged.  Often, these gatherings lasted for days before and after the actual ceremony.

Pioneers expected the bonds of marriage to last the rest of their natural lives.  Divorce was extremely rare.  Instead, most unhappy couples simply agreed to live apart.  One such example was the case of Confederate veteran Burb Johns and Mrs. Marzilla Wood Keen, each being the other's second spouse.  After rocky years together, they made the mutual decision to reside separately with children from their prior marriages.  Nevertheless, despite her stepdaughters' objections, Marzilla succeeded in winning a state pension based on Burb's military service because their marriage was never legally terminated.

A few unhappy couples did file for divorce.   Two of the earliest cases in surviving Orange County court records involved pioneers from the Pine Castle area.  The first involved Confederate veteran Solomon Heidt, who returned from military service in the War Between the States to discover his wife had given birth to another man's child.  Even then, he did not legally divorce her but chose to leave their home in Georgia to start a new life in Florida.  He only filed for divorce when he decided to remarry to a local girl in 1873.

Sidenote: A pie hutch built by Mr. Heidt for his second wife is on permanent loan to Pine Castle Pioneer Days.

A more sensational case was the 1878 divorce of William Beverly Randolph and the former Carrie Eppes.  The source of their unhappiness was the rocky relationship between Mrs. Randolph and her mother-in-law, not to mention Mr. Randolph's failure to intervene.  The frustrated wife became so enraged on one occasion that she actually bit her husband, after which he returned her to her parents' home at Lake Pineloch and filed for divorce.  (Both parties subsequently remarried, happily as far as the historical record shows.)

Still, it was not divorce but death that ended most pioneer marriages.  Women generally outlived their husbands if they managed to survive the perils of child bearing.  Both genders remarried with much greater frequency than we see today.

To learn more about pioneer folkways, come to the Pioneer Days festival on February 21st and 22nd at Cypress Grove Park, 290 Holden Avenue, Orlando, FL 32809.