Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- What Was the Great Love Story in Your Family Tree?

  From Randy (my cousin) over at Genea-Musings:

it's Saturday Night - 

time for more Genealogy Fun!!!

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to:

1)  It's Valentine's Day - a day for lovers!  We all have hundreds of love stories in our ancestry.

2) What was the great love story of the ancestors in your family tree? What wedding had a great story in it? Choose one ancestral couple. Share how they met (if known), when and where they married. Note how long they were married. Highlight something that suggests affection or partnership.

3)  Share your great love story in your family tree in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook or other social media post.  Please leave a link to your post on this blog post to help us find your post.

Here's mine:

Lusion Keman "Loosh" Tapley 1870-1935
and
Mattie Schwalls 1877-1912

Lusion Tapley was my "Papa," my paternal grandfather.  Mattie Schwalls was his second wife, but she was  undoubtedly the love of his life.  Or at the very least he was the love of hers.    

While I do not know how they met, the story is that Papa and Mattie were engaged in 1897-1898 or so.  However, before they could marry, a wrench got thrown into the works.  A wrench that I believe shows what a good, honorable man my Papa must have been.

Papa's first cousin, 1x removed, Martha "Jane" Page (1875-1899), came to him with a problem.  Her father was going to force her (or had promised her) to marry a much older man.  She did not want to do that.  So to help her, Papa agreed to marry her.  They were married January 28, 1898 in Johnson County, Georgia.

And Mattie Schwalls waited.  

Papa and Jane's baby, Annie, was born on March 15, 1899.  Jane passed away on May 31 of the same year.  So they were only married 16 months.  Papa was left with a newborn, and he needed to work the fields in order to support himself and that baby.  So Lusion's parents, Jim and Becky Page Tapley, raised Annie.  

Time passed and Mattie Schwalls still had not moved on.  I don't know if they had to wait a respectable amount of time after Jane passed before they married or if Papa had some talking to do to get back in Mattie's good graces, but it was November 18, 1903 before Lusion and Mattie married in Johnson County, Georgia.  Almost 6 years after Lusion had married Jane Page.  

Mattie had waited, and they were finally together.  

Unfortunately, the union only lasted 8 1/2 years.  On April 26, 1912, Mattie and their 4th son died during childbirth.  

My father always said that his father loved Mattie Schwalls.  He felt the ornate monument (headstone) that Papa put on Mattie's grave was a symbol of that love and devotion.  So much so that when a storm came through Kite several years ago and that headstone was sheared in half, my father paid to have it repaired.  Mattie was not even his mother, but he respected the love his father had for her.