Abraham White's mules and marriage's elusive bliss

Abraham "Uncle Abe" White was 70 and had been a widower for four years when he wed the somewhat younger widow, Sarah Ondorouk, 63, on Sunday, Nov. 12, 1882, in Chariton. He was a dealer in real estate and livestock and apparently very stout, weighing in at somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 pounds.

All went well on Monday but then on Tuesday the newlyweds set out to go visiting in a buggy pulled by a team of mules. The return home was dramatic enough to be rolled into The Chariton Patriot's report of the marriage, published on Nov. 15 under the headline, "In the Arms of Father Abraham."

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Coincidently with the inauguration of the cold winter season, Uncle Abe White has taken to himself a wife. On Sunday morning he was joined in the holy bonds of matrimony to Mrs. Sarah Ondorouk. The Patriot reporter had been nosing around for a week past to discover the date of the ceremony, but Uncle Abe took every precaution to keep it a secret from the public, and especially his old cronies. The newly married couple, although in the meridian of life, will doubtless enjoy the wedded bliss just as well as younger people, and the best wishes of the community are with Mr. White and his bride in their new departure.

Uncle Abe is, we believe, the largest real estate dealer in Iowa, weighing 300 pounds and wearing a vest six feet in circumference. No cyclone could get away with him. If one would come fooling around him, he would just back up to it and let it rip away until it got tired, and the cyclone would get knocked out in the first round and have to sneak away with its tail between its legs.

Yesterday, Mr. White hitched his mule team to a buggy and he and his bride went out on their wedding trou. Uncle Abe was feeling as happy as a democrat and everything went lively as a summer morn, until the expedition returned, the lady was safely deposited, and the gay deceiver prepared to put the team away.

There he made a bad, bad break. He attempted to drive into the barn without letting the buggy top down, and as the door was about a foot too low for the successful execution of the scheme, there was a crash, things came to a standstill and the mules commenced a circus performance. Abe put the top down and tried to get the brutes to go ahead, but they positively refused and a neighbor who was passing was called upon to assist.

when the mules were put away, Uncle Abe proceeded to spank them with a fence board, but they hugged the side of the barn and tried to get him within range of their heels until he gave it up as a bad job and went out back of the stable to say some bad words and cool off before he presented himself before his good lady.

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Alas, wedded bliss eluded the newlyweds. She filed for divorce the following April, a process accompanied by several public notices that she would not be responsible for any of his debts.

Abraham died five years later, on the 31st of January 1888, and was buried by the side of his first wife, Ada M., in the Chariton Cemetery. What became of Sarah, I cannot say.