On this day…

117 years ago,

my maternal great grandparents,

William Oscar and Una June

were married in Jasper, Missouri.

William was 23,

Una was only 16.

Una’s mother, Nancy, offered her approval.

There are no known photos of

the two of them together,

nor have I ever seen

a photo of William,

and so my imagination is all I have

of how they may have looked together,

of how joyous their union

may have been.

I think about their marriage often,

about their two children,

a daughter born 16 months after their union

and a son,

my Grandpa Phil,

seven years later.

I also often think

about their divorce,

sometime before 1921,

when Una began her second marriage

and birthed a second daughter

in Oklahoma before moving

to California after being rather quickly widowed.

William, holding steady in Missouri,

must have simply

began again,

though I don’t believe he ever re-married.

There were trains to conduct

and Deputy Sheriff duties to complete.

There is so much I don’t know

yet

about this union,

their relatively short time together,

or how it ended

and so I will keep searching,

because I feel in my bones

that there is much more to their stories

than has been uncovered

or written

to date.

Onward,

Melis