There's nothing quite like a juicy scandal to divert the mind during troublesome times, so I was encouraged Friday when I came across this brief item under the headline "Police Points" in The Chariton Patriot of Feb. 2, 1882:
"David Batchellor, who has been living with Mrs. Green in the east part of town for the past year or more, was yesterday put under arrest by Officer Coles on the charge of lewdness. The trial will take place Monday."
"Now what do you suppose this is all about?" I asked myself, reading onward until I found this follow-up paragraph farther along on the same page:
"The Englishman Batchellor, who was last week put under arrest on the charge of lewdness, is now trying to get out of the scrape by marrying Mrs. Green, with whom he has been living for some time past. He this morning applied to Clerk Larimer for a marriage license, but was refused because the decree of divorce of Mrs. Green from her former husband had never been filed by her attorneys nor costs of court paid. How the matter will terminate it is hard to say, but a compromise of some kind will probably be arrived at."
So there you have it, Chariton's guardians of public morality had descended upon the unfortunate pair for the unpardonable wickedness of living together without benefit of wedlock.
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There is a happy ending here, however, apparently accomplished after the loose ends of the bride's divorce had been sorted out, as the record in Lucas County's marriage register for that year (above) shows.
David Bachelor, 36, a native of Scotland and butcher by trade, son of William Batchelor and Jane Hag, was wed on March 10, 1882, to Mary J. Cerf, age 38, native of Massachusetts, daughter of Hile Heath and Esther Jewell. Nelson B. Gardiner, justice of the peace, presided. It was David's second marriage and Mary's fourth.
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But what was the deal with "Mrs. Green"? Well, here's that part of the story.
Mary (born 1842) had married when she was about 20 years old Dr. Jabez Green (1818-1872), a physician and Civil War veteran more than 20 years her senior. They were living in Newton with their five children --- Frances M., Ellen, William J., Charles H. and Hattie --- when he died at the age of 64 during 1872. Hattie was born the same year her father died.
The young widow married a gentleman identified only as A. Collins after that but what became of him isn't known, although he may have brought the family to Clarke County. Whatever happened, he was out of the picture by the 7th of April 1880 when Mary married at Woodburn her third husband, Henry Cerf, native of France and identified in the 1880 census as a physician and surgeon.
Henry, Mary and her three youngest children were living in Warren Township, very near Chariton, when the 1880 census was taken --- and this was the marriage that had ended in divorce. Mary, it would appear, had reclaimed her earlier surname informally after the divorce. What became of Dr. Cerf, I can't say. But he doesn't seem to have stuck around Chariton.
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David and Mary Batchelor moved from Chariton to Des Moines soon after their marriage; Chariton's intense interest in their relationship probably hadn't created many warm memories of Lucas County for them.
The were living in Des Moines when the 1885 state census was taken. David still was working as a butcher and the three younger Green children still were at home. It appears that they by now had a child of their own, a little girl, age 3, whose name I can't make out on the census record although it may have been "Mabel."
Sadly, Mary died during 1888, age 46. Her remains were taken to Newton for burial beside her first husband, Dr. Green, and they share a good-sized stone today, probably erected by their children, in Newton Union Cemetery.
David's family had settled near Jewell in Hamilton County, Iowa, and he seems to have moved there when his health failed after 1890. He died on Sept. 17, 1892, age 49, and was buried with his parents in Jewell's Evergreen Cemetery.
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