Local history: Thorny tales of spring romance
Ah, spring. It’s a season when relationships can blossom or wither.
Today we offer a collection of breezy items from the merry, merry month of May. These Akron stories, full of twists and turns, appeared in newspapers across the country.
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We reprint them in their entirety for your reading pleasure.
Win some, lose some
May 21, 1884: The misfortunes of an Ohio woman ought to be a warning to wives who contemplate eloping with handsome men.
Thomas Dillon’s wife ran away from her home at Akron, Ohio last week, and took the children and $1,400. The next day, Mr. Dillon received a letter announcing the death of a brother, who left him $50,000 and the prospective heir to an estate worth $1,000,000.
He says Mrs. Dillon shall not have a cent.
Not a good match
May 20, 1889: While Arthur Frazier and wife were calling at the home of Edward Howe and wife near Hawkins, this county, Sunday afternoon, Mrs. Howe bantered Mr. Frazier to a wrestling match, saying she had thrown every man who had ever tested strength with her.
Frazier accepted the challenge, and after a brief struggle, Mrs. Howe threw him on his back, when, without a word, he expired.
It is supposed he ruptured an artery. An inquest is being held.
There goes the bride
May 15, 1896: Miss Jessie Hane was to become a bride Thursday night, but the wedding has been indefinitely postponed on account of the young woman having lost her reason.
She was stricken Wednesday, since which time her mind has been a perfect blank. She was handsome and talented and would have become Mrs. Fred H. O’Brien.
A companion for life
May 20, 1899: Mrs. Matilda Philbrick of Cuyahoga Falls recently advertised for a position as companion.
The advertisement was read by Hiram F. Tobey, a wealthy fruit-grower of Decatur, Ohio, who replied, asking Mrs. Philbrick to become his companion for life.
They were married at Cuyahoga Falls Thursday. Tobey is 64 years old, his wife 41.
Welcome to the family
May 11, 1905: When James Staub opened his front door the other morning he found a basket on the step containing a 3 days old infant.
Pinned to the basket was this note: “Otis, this is yours; take care of it, as I am too poor to do so.” No name was signed.
James Staub called his son Otis, age 25, unmarried, and asked him about it.
“It looks like Maggie Stotler’s writing,” faltered Otis, referring to a young woman with whom he had been keeping company.
With the basket in one hand and holding his son’s arm with the other, the father led the way to the young woman’s house, where the latter, propped up in bed, consented to parley. The father, again to the front, got a license and a minister and in a few minutes a most uncomfortable period for Otis was ended. He became a husband.
The Staubs are well known here and wealthy. The young woman is poor and worked in a factory previous to becoming Mrs. Staub.
Making a clean break
May 28, 1907: Mrs. Frank Porter has sued for divorce. In her petition she alleges she lived with Porter from August, 1906, until April of the present year, and that during that time he never took a bath.
Embraceable you
May 31, 1911: Patrick Sweeny, 39 years old, an alleged “Jack the Hugger,” confessed to-day that he had molested women and girls on the streets. He was given a workhouse sentence.
For some months, the city has been up in arms after the antics of a man who has been following and hugging women on the streets.
Foolish decision
May 8, 1913: Mrs. Lloyd Read, a very pretty girl of the Gibson type, has told her story of how she became the April fool bride of an Akron millionaire. She wants a divorce, and her case is now before Justice Gerard in the Supreme Court in New York, the judge who was mentioned as a probable selection of President Wilson for ambassador to Austria.
Mrs. Read was Miss Sadie Mullen and a show girl. She met Read at Akron when she was traveling through here with a beauty show April 1, 1912. After a furious cross-country drive in Read’s big car the couple were wedded by a Pittsburgh alderman whom they rousted out of bed early April 1.
According to Miss Mullen, she suddenly awakened to realize that she was an April fool bride. Without a moment’s reflection she left Read in his car, boarded a train and went back to her company in Akron that night. Two days later, she went to New York and told her mother of her foolishness.
Yours, mine and ours
May 3, 1921: Giuseppe Sarniola, 34 years old, who attempted to square the triangle formed when his wife arrived Friday from Italy, and found him living with a second, by keeping both, was sentenced to the Canton workhouse for one year by Judge H.C. Spicer of Domestic Relations Court to-day.
Sarniola was found by probation officers living with three children, one by his first wife, one the son of his second wife’s first husband and one by his second wife, in a little one-room shack. A second son by his second wife was born at dawn this morning.
Judge Spicer ruled that Sarniola was living in a manner which would tend to contribute to the delinquency of the children.
Sarniola’s case had been given wide publicity and it was to make an example of him that he was given so severe a sentence, Judge Spicer said, adding that the practice of taking a second wife while the first wife was in Europe was becoming too common in this country.
A little off the top
May 11, 1922: Orrin Cox, a rubber worker, today sheared four feet of hair from the head of his wife to prevent her from leaving her family to travel with an advertiser and demonstrator of hair tonic.
Cox watched her as she braided her hair for the night. Then as she came in front of the mirrors, he clipped the braided hair which reached her ankles. Cox is now in a hospital suffering from a nervous breakdown.
“I would give a million dollars if I could restore your hair,” Cox said after being reconciled at the hospital today.
Scratch and dent
May 11, 1923: Ben Orling of Cleveland must pay $500 an inch for a scar he inflicted on Miss Leona May Lotze, of Akron, in a collision of his truck with an automobile in which the girl was riding last September.
A jury in common pleas court decided that the marriageable value of her looks had been reduced $1,000 by the two-inch disfigurement on her left cheek.
She sued for $5,000, which her attorney, Paul Laybourne, said was the actual depreciation of her charge as a potential wife.
Let’s get hitched
May 5, 1937: Blond, attractive Julia Ellen Leathers has not been lacking proposals in marriage since her two gas wells started coming in.
The 22-year-old Akron girl, who estimated that the second well alone would mean “about $1,000 a day for myself and a few friends who financed the drilling,” counted her proposals in the hundreds today.
They range from telephone calls from young men who want a date at once to painstakingly written letters from many cities.
“Thus far, Julia Ellen has managed to answer all the letters which have come to her,” said her father, A.C. Leathers. “She gets a kick out of it, but she tells them all the same thing — that she is not interested in marriage.”
Love you to death
May 12, 1949: Marilyn Stevenson lost her freedom today for attempting to poison the man she loved.
The 22-year-old receptionist was sentenced yesterday to two to 15 years in Marysville Reformatory for Women. She pleaded guilty to mingling food with poison.
The state charged she slipped into the home of Dr. Charles F. Jones, 36, a veterinarian, and put poison in a glass of milk. Dr. Jones merely tasted the milk and suffered no serious effects.
Miss Stevenson, receptionist in the Akron Veterinary Hospital, testified she had an infatuation for the doctor similar to “hero worship.”
She admitted sending anonymous messages to Dr. Jones’ wife urging her to give the veterinarian a divorce.
We’ll try this again
May 11, 1955: An 80-year-old father of seven filed suit for divorce yesterday. He did not demand custody of the children.
Andrew Stanick, a retired rubber worker, charged his 74-year-old wife, Mary, with neglect. It was the fourth divorce suit filed between the couple, married in 1901.
Their children range in age from 36 to 50.
Bird in the hand
May 21, 1955: Walter C. Ilijevich got the bird — officially — in Common Pleas Court.
Ilijevich, granted a divorce yesterday from his wife, Bertha, told Judge Clande V.D. Emmons:
“She took everything she could carry. She left canned goods but she took the can opener. She cleaned out my piggy bank — all except 10 cents — and I guess she left that so I could buy a beer.”
But Ilijevich said his wife left him a note urging that he “take good care of Dickey.”
“Who is Dickey?” asked the judge.
“The canary,” Ilijevich replied.
“And so you got the bird?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you can keep it. I award it to you in the decree.”
A load of rubbish
May 10, 1956: George Marunic, 34, went to police today with this complaint:
His girlfriend knocked at his apartment door last night and wanted to talk. Marunic, not in a talking mood, told her to scram.
She did, but opened his bathroom window and squirted his floor with a garden hose and then dumped a can of rubbish on his car.
Police were undecided about the proper course of action.
Mark J. Price can be reached at mprice@thebeaconjournal.com.
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This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Local history: Thorny tales of spring romance
