The 1st Wife, the 2nd Wife...Arkansas Marriages

I've heard people with teeth clenching frustration bemoan tracing women in their family history and I'm right there with them when search before 1850.  After 1850, they are still gritting their teeth and I'm smirking along. The only furrowed brow I really encountered were with Jonathan Hosea Callaway's two oldest daughters, Mary Ann Rachel and Martha Van. Their birth dates were clearly recorded in the family bible but not their marriages. 

Without a record of their marriage and their husbands' last name, it becomes difficult to trace them through census records. However, an hour at the genealogy center on Ancestry.com (Library Edition) soon solved this issue. These are transcriptions, not copies of the originals (if you know anything by now is that I thrive on the originals, so I'm still working on getting those).

Transcription: Mary R. Calloway, Female, age 23, born abt 1840, residing in Ashley Co. Arkansas, marries F F Brud, Male, age 34, marriage date - 23 December 1863

I'm still a little furrowed on this one because the surname Brud is not popping up. I really need the original in case there was an error in the transcription (i.e. the name was misspelled). 

The 2nd daughter was Martha Van and apparently went by "Mattie" since her step-mother was also a Martha. I found "Mattie Van Calloway" also married in Ashley County, Arkansas on December 5, 1867 to J. H. Riggin. Still smirking I did a search on FindaGrave.com and found she died on May 7, 1880.  Again her husband is listed as Rev. J. H. Riggin. I blinked... and blinked again. Wait, is that right?!

I quickly shuffled through my files for the youngest daughter of Jonathan Hosea Callaway. Her name was Louisa "Lula" Mason and she married.... yep, there it was, "John H. Riggin." Married  September 24, 1880 - just 4 months after her sister's death. Oh, Come on! Maybe this was a cousin with the same initials? Right? Right?

I checked to see if Lula's J.H. Riggin was a minister too... yep. Then I found these photographs. The back says "Riggin & 1st Wife Callaway." The dating of the photograph puts it between 1860 and 1890, well within the time period for Mattie's marriage to J.H. Riggin. Therefore, based on the above collected evidence and until new evidence proves me wrong, this is one of the few pictures I have of Martha "Mattie" Van Callaway.

That's Arkansas marriages for you and if you think about the time period, it actually makes a lot of sense. I could go into a cultural anthropology thing, but I think I'll save that for another article.