This Valentine’s Day while celebrating the relationships of the present, celebrate those of the past as well. Use the occasion to learn how each generation of your family came into being. How they met, their first date, their wedding day…. 

Getting these details first hand from your living relatives is an opportunity you don’t want to miss. Whatever the circumstances, however unique or typical the tale, it is worth understanding how your family came together. 

The romance and particulars of generations long gone may seem lost, but it is possible to learn their stories, as well, with a little bit of research. The following are a few more local tales of love in Greene County history, and the sources that revealed them:

A Civil War Soldier Finds His Match

"Adams-Robinson December 10, 1876, in Beverly, Ohio, by Rev. Chapman, Mr. Robert Adams, of Leavenworth, Kas., to Miss Mary Robinson, of the former place….Robert is a son of Mr. Elijah Adams, steward of the Poor House, and the bride is a graduate of Waynesburg College, a bright and intelligent lady. Robert carries an empty coat sleeve, having lost an arm at Fredericksburg, but he now has two arms for the one he lost. May their arms never be less."

(Adams-Robinson marriage announcement, Waynesburg Republican, Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, 17 January 1877, page 3, column 6.)

Thrown Together

Roy Buchanan and Sara Livingood were classmates, a common method of meeting for many of our relative pairs, but they did not become a couple until a school field trip threw them together. On the way back to Rogersville after a day in Pittsburgh, one of the two school busses broke down. The students were combined onto one bus to finish the trip home, and to make the fit Sara rode the rest of the way sitting on Roy's lap….and so began the relationship. They graduated from Center Township Vocational High School in 1934, and were married in 1938 after Sara graduated from Waynesburg College.

(Interview with Sara (Livingood) Buchanan, 2003.)

Parental Consent Not Required

“[Sarah Throckmorton] was decidedly attractive girl of much more than ordinary intellectuality. Her laugh lay very near her lips, and to her keen sense of humor she added a gift of putting amusing things in words that made her marry company. Among her many ardent admirers was Joseph M. Milligan, a handsome, witty young student of Irish descent, – courteous in manner, entertaining in conversation, a sweet singer, but poor in purse. They became engaged, but the engagement met with opposition from the young lady’s parents. So they hied themselves to the Waynesburg M. E. Parsonage and were secretly married by Rev. M. J. Pierce, 15 Aug., 1861. Several weeks later, during the minister’s vacation, two students glancing over his books discovered the marriage record and noised it abroad. Mrs. Throckmorton, while shopping in Waynesburg, heard the report and was properly scandalized. Hurrying home the lively Sarah was promptly interviewed, and then and there received such a severe, old-fashioned Puritanic scolding that the memory lingered long, and surreptitious marriages were never popular among her descendants.”

It should be noted that Joseph and Sarah did remain wed and went on to raise a family of five children despite their rough welcome to married life.

(Frances Grimes Sitherwood, Throckmorton Family History: Being the Record of the Throckmortons in the United States of America with Cognate Branches (Bloomington, Illinois: Pantagraph Printing & Stationary Co., 1929), 178.)

Love Me As I Am

“Dale, tall, dark wavy hair, brown eyes and the son of a preacher man, met Ruth, very attractive, blue eyes, beautiful smile and the stepdaughter of a farmer. It was love at first sight. He had brought his mother, Minnie to the farm to buy milk. Ruth was ironing and her mother Bertha told her to wash her face and comb her hair because the preacher’s wife and son had come. She told her mother, she really didn’t care, she wasn’t wanting to impress anyone. So the story goes and the following December, they announced their engagement. On 26 June l937 they were married in the Kuhntown Methodist Church. Dale’s father Rev. Watts solemnized a large wedding with several attendants, who had made their own gowns and bouquets.”

(Written by Marilyn (Watts) Kerr in 2005 for her parents’ Memory Medallion.)