An 1878 Marriage of Two Women–Sort Of

Marriage of a Woman to a Woman

The Brownville, Nebraska, Nebraska Advertiser of 20 June 1878 contains an item from the Tuscarora [Nevada] Times-Review that mentions the marriage of a Marancy Hughes and a Samuel M. Pollard that the newspaper suggests took place in Nevada in 1878.

It turned out that Samuel M. Pollard was not a Samuel after all.

Samuel A. Pollard was actually Sarah Pollard.

Two marriages in Elko County, Nevada for Marcency Hughes appear in Ancestry.com‘s “Nevada Marriages 1860-1987:”

One is for her marriage to Pollard and one is for her marriage to Linebarger. At some point the Linebargers moved to Montana. Tuscarora, Nevada, is a ghost town today but was apparently a boom town during the era of these marriages.

I only stumbled upon this reference while searching for references to my aunt Emmar (Sargent) Pollard who lived in Nebraska in the 1870-1880 era.

Were I researching this Sarah, I’d probably start with court records in Elko County to see if there was an annulment of the marriage. I’m also curious if any later annotation was made on the marriage record between Pollard and Hughes.

This serves as another reminder that items can be printed in newspapers thousands of miles away from where they actually took place.

You never know when your relative may have been involved in something that generated widespread attention. Sometimes the most scandalous of stories aren’t passed down for future generations.