Lucy Cline's (at Least) Nine Marriages: Love and Abuse in Early 20th-century Texas

My maternal great-great-great-grandfather Thomas J. Kennedy was born in April 1861 in Macon County, Alabama, son of the slave owner William Kennedy (1817-1882) and Eliza Dillard, who died between 1866 and 1870, when T.J. was a boy. On April 4, 1878, near Tuskegee (Times-Argus, Selma, Apr. 19, 1878), T.J. married Mary E. Wilder. The couple settled in Coaling, Tuscaloosa County, where T.J. worked, unsurprisingly, "on [the] coal shoots" (1880 Census); their first daughter, Lucy, born in late 1879, died there in April 1880 at five months, from dysentery. Shortly afterwards, T.J. and Mary moved to the northeast, to Wilton, outside Birmingham, where their second daughter, Minnie Lee, was born in March 1881. Their third known daughter, Lula Mae, my great-great-grandmother, was born in September 1886, and by May 1891, when T.J. filed for divorce, citing infidelity (Daily News, Birmingham, May 14, 1891), T.J. and Mary lived near Irondale, also near Birmingham. I haven't been able to locate the case files corresponding to the divorces granted in the Birmingham "City Court," but by 1895 T.J. had made his way with his daughters to Bell County, Texas (over 700 miles away following modern routes!); he first appears on the tax rolls in this year, and Minnie was married there in September 1896. It's currently not known what happened to Mary.

On February 5, 1900, T.J. married Lucy (née Cline) in neighboring McLennan County. (Perhaps he was married in between Mary and Lucy, but not in the region near Bell Co.) Lucy had previously been married to Simon Peter Taylor (m. Jan. 17, 1891), with whom she had two children, Sareptah Margarett (1891-1964) and Dock Hilton (1894-1953), before separating from him on February 7, 1898 in Bell County; their divorce was granted on July 8 (civil cause #4677). (This and following divorce-related information comes the records of the respective county courts, available through FamilySearch.org. There are typically case files, with testimony, and decrees.) Within a year of their marriage, Peter, as he was known, "commenced a course of unkind, harsh, and tyrranical conduct" toward Lucy (formulaic language for divorce proceedings of the time). On that day in February 1898, Peter, "in a cruel and barbarous manner, did beat and bruise and whip" Lucy, and she was "forced to seek the protection of the law, and upon a hearing of such circumstances [... Peter] was convicted of an aggravated assault [...] and was fined forty dollars and given a sentence of 40 days in jail." Criminal prosecution like this was rare.

In the 1900 Census enumerated on June 5, T.J. and Lucy are living in Holland, Bell County, together with Lucy's younger sister Ellen, her two children Sareptah and Dock, and Lula Mae, aged 13, Lucy's new stepdaughter. During T.J. and Lucy's marriage, it seems she bore him a child that died: in the 1900 Census, Lucy lists four children, with two living; in the 1910 Census, she lists five children, with two living. What specifically was happeing at this time is unclear. However, on September 14, 1903, T.J. and Lucy separated; their divorce, with Lucy as plaintiff, was granted on November 16 (civil cause #5826). Lucy testified that as T.J.'s wife "she conducted herself with propriety, managed the household affairs [...] with prudence and economy, and at all times treated [T.J.] with kindness and forebearance" (similarly formulaic language). But "within about two years," T.J. had commenced the same "unkind, harsh, and tyrranical conduct." One time, apparently, when Lucy was going to visit her sister, T.J. told her to "fall off of the train and cripple herself," so he could sue for damages. Another time, about September 1, 1903, Lucy went to church at night, only to come home to all the doors and windows of the house locked; she had go to stay with friends. Other times, T.J. wouldn't speak to her for two-week intervals, and Lucy had to take in washing to support herself even before she left their shared home. T.J. was a man "with an ungovernable temper" (more formulaic language, but still). According to Lucy, their shared property (real and personal) amounted to $700, a fairly large sum. This is my ancestor, the man who raised the woman who raised my great-grandmother, Erline, who I knew as a boy.

Holland, Texas, October 2019 (photo by author)

Curiously, T.J. and Lucy married again eight days after their divorce, on November 24, 1903, separating again on February 5, just over two months later; their divorce was granted on November 28, 1904 (civil cause #6004), after they had been separated for more than nine months. This time, T.J. was plaintiff. As he put it, on this date in February, Lucy left, after which he "entreated her to return to his house and live [...] as his wife and discharge the domestic duties about the house as a wife should do." Additionally, he claimed that, on June 24, 1904, and again in August and September (after the separation but before the divorce was filed), Lucy had "received the attention and visits of one Charlie Karl." During these visits, Lucy "permitted [...] Karl, who [was] a married man, to make indecent overtures to her in this, stating to her that he, Karl, loved her much more than [T.J.] love[d] her and suggested to her to never return to and live with [him]." T.J. went on to claim that Lucy "expressed great affection for [...] Karl and declared to [T.J.] and also to said Karl that she had no love whatever for [T.J.] but placed her affections wholly on said Karl." (Lucy's step-daughter Lula Mae, my grandfather's grandmother, married in the middle of all of this, in March 1904, to Webb O. Jay. They lived in Bell Co. at least through April 1905, when their son Hugh was born.)

Case File for T.J. and Lucy's Second Divorce (FamilySearch.org)

Charles Karl -- with his suspiciously duplicate name -- was born in the early 1850s in Moravia, an eastern region of the modern-day Czech Republic. He had settled in Bell County, Texas by 1885 (the first year he appears on tax rolls), and married his first wife, Anna Brusch, two years later. Interestingly, Anna died April 23, 1903, some six months before T.J. and Lucy's first separation. Maybe Charles Karl and Lucy's affair began at this time; maybe she sought him out, recently made a widower, for safety from T.J. However, two days before T.J. and Lucy married each other again, Charles Karl remarried, on November 22, to Tereza Kadlec (née Sefcik), another Czech-speaking Moravian. Perhaps Lucy returned to T.J. in desperation, her safety in Charles come to an end. Regardless, Charles's new marriage seems to not have discouraged his more public "overtures," since they began, to T.J.'s knowledge, just over six months later.

After T.J. and Lucy's second divorce, she remained unmarried for nearly a year. On September 28, 1905 she married again, to James Woodlaw McDonald, over 20 years her senior, as Charles had been. "J.W." and Lucy separated on October 31, 1907; their divorce, with Lucy as plaintiff, was granted on June 4, 1908 (civil cause #7030). Lucy does not attest to physical abuse from J.W., but he was clearly verbally abusive ("harsh and unkind words and expressions to her and said children"). On this date in October, J.W. seems to have told Lucy to leave with her children and a few possessions, during a rainstorm. Afterwards, J.W. did not provide for Lucy or his step-children, and Lucy was "compelled to wash, work in fields and farms, such as picking cotton, hoeing cotton and corn" together with her children. She claims to have always been similarly "kind and forebearing" toward J.W., but that he had an "impatient and unkind manner."

Some six weeks after J.W. and Lucy's divorce, she married again, to R. Osborn Baggett, on July 24, 1908. They separated on May 22, 1909; their divorce was granted, with Lucy as plaintiff, well over a year later, on November 17, 1910 (civil cause #7734). Lucy's testimony makes it seem that Baggett was like J.W., with a drinking problem ("the defendant became intoxicated often"). Baggett similarly "failed to provide food and clothing and fuel for [Lucy] and child," and she again had to stay with friends after their separation. But Charles Karl may have been involved again. He separated from his second wife, Tereza, on June 1, 1909, just over a week after Baggett and Lucy separated, and was granted a divorce as plaintiff on November 3, claiming that Tereza "cursed and abused him, and that she would go off and leave him of a night, and spend whole nights at dances." Maybe Charles and Lucy's affair again got in the way. However, Charles's wife Tereza was in fact four months pregnant when Charles and her separation occurred, and their divorce came two weeks after she gave birth to their third child. They married each other again six days later, on November 9, while Lucy remained separated from Baggett. The following April (1910), still some seven months before her divorce from Baggett, she is enumerated on the Census as "widow," cooking at a hotel.

Lucy Baggett in 1910 Census (row 60; Ancestry.com)

After R.O. Baggett and Lucy's divorce, she, for the second time, married a previous husband for the second time, namely J.W. McDonald again, on February 4, 1911. From here, events become less clear. Lucy's daughter, Sareptah -- who herself had married in 1908, divorced in 1911, and married the same man again in 1912 -- moved two counties to the south, to Bastrop County. Lucy may have followed her. Regardless, that's where she divorced J.W. for the second time, on January 13, 1914. The civil case files from Bastrop County are disordered (not arranged by case number or chronologically), and I haven't searched through them all yet to find the corresponding case file; so it's not possible currently to know details about their separation. From here, Lucy becomes difficult to track: she applied for Social Security, and that record, from November 1939, over 25 years later, shows her name as Lucy Cline Hohertz. (She can be corroborated as the same person based on an exact date of birth and names of parents, including her mother's maiden name.) Hohertz would be a fifth distinct husband, but a seventh marriage. In April 1940, she is enumerated in the Census as Lucy Livingston, widowed, living in Hamilton County (two to the north of Bell), where her son Dock also lived. In this Census, she gives her residence as of April 1935 as also Hamilton County. On July 13, 1944, in neighboring Coryell County, "Mrs. L.W. Livingston" (records of her children also give her middle initial as W) married John Henry Hoard, a seventh husband, after Livingston, and her ninth known marriage. Lucy was married to Hoard when she died, on July 10, 1954, in Hamilton, aged probably 80. (Various records consistently give her date of birth as December 7. The June 1880 Census enumerates her as six years old, suggesting 1873 as a year of birth, the same given on her death certificate; the 1900 Census lists her month of birth as December 1875.)

What happened to Lucy between January 1914 and November 1939? Who were Hohertz and Livingston? I haven't been able to locate her in the 1920 or 1930 censuses, nor have I been able to locate marriage records for a Lucy McDonald in statewide indexes, or a Lucy marrying men with the surnames Hohertz or Livingston. There is certainly more searching to do, for example, for Hohertz and Livingston deaths and divorces in Williamson and Hamilton counties, but these records are either not available online, or available only at Family History Centers, awaiting a future weekend! Finally, T.J. Kennedy, my ancestor, is similarly mysterious: the last trace of him is as the defendant in a civil suit from one J.H. Wilson (civil cause #6438), dismissed at the cost of the plaintiff.