Ailsey Willhelm married Jacob Cline in Alabama on September 5, 1849. Even though a marriage record exists, genealogy geeks find it way more fun to locate a newspaper spread describing the glorious wedding ceremony.
Or not. I found only a paragraph on page 3. This Huntsville paper doesn't say where they wed or from which county the record was filed. Only that the couple lived in nearby Marshall County. See the third sentence that I clipped from Newspapers.com:
It was a second marriage for both, as this couple's previous spouses had died. Neither Jacob nor the widow McCulley were spring chickens. Ailsey (how DOES one say that name?) was about 56, and is only identified as "Mrs. McCullouch." And no, I did not spend extra time reading later papers for a retraction of her misspelled name. Papers were (and are) often rife with errors.
Should any cousins read this, Ailsey was our 4x GGrandfather's little sister, and the daughter of Tobias Wilhelm.
But, hey! Let's not stop there. What's the news of the day in Huntsville, Alabama? See three clips from The Democrat's front page. Mind you, on the FRONT PAGE:
You saw the motto under the paper's "flag," right? (stirring background music plays here)
"Unawed by the influence of the rich or the great, the People must be heard,
and their rights vindicated."
Fine words for rich white guys. Not so much for females or those enslaved.
In Madison County, Alabama on 5 Sep 1849 several enslaved people were mentioned in an ad in the Huntsville Democrat paper. Their slave-owner appears to be Richard Pryor. See the article below.
Knowing this may appear in a Google search, I'm listing the names of the enslaved humans for family historians who may be looking for them: Rachel aged 34, Nancy aged 45, Judy and child aged 16, Moses aged 10, Amanda aged 7, Patty aged 13, Eliza aged 8.
I hope their descendants can trace back to these seven people.
"A married woman or feme covert was a dependent, like an underage child or a slave,
and could not own property in her own name or control her own earnings, except under
very specific circumstances. When a husband died, his wife could not be the guardian
to their under-age children."
#TheyHadNames