Married at the fair

Like so many genealogy journeys, this one started with a photo.

A cute little baby on a cabinet card from Aunt Laura, circa 1902, that said Leah Linn(?)on the back. Now, I couldn't recall a Leah Linn, so I went to Ancestry and did a name search, and came up with Leah Jobes (born 2 Jul 1901) who married an Ernest Linn. That's where the story got interesting. One of my favorite sources to flesh out an ancestor's story is to try and find mention of them in newspapers of the time. I hit the jackport on this one!

What's this?

Both the Buffalo News (Aug 12, 1922 and Sep 11, 1922) carried articles that told the story of the Chautauqua County Fair Committee coming up with an idea - about a month before the fair - to hold a contest and offer $100 in gold, furniture and wedding presents to any couple in Chautauqua county who will consent to be married at the fair grounds on September 15. Couples who were interested had to send an application in for consideration. Because of the overwhelming response they got, the fair committee ended up drawing a couple's name.

As best I can tell, with the timeline from contest announcement to wedding being 30 days, the lucky couple must have had about 2 weeks to pull this together, by the time they were notified that they had been chosen.As luck would have it, Miss Jobes and Mr. Linn were planning a fall wedding, but hadn't settled on a date.

The Dunkirk Evening Observer described the wedding in a Sept 15, 1922 article:
The public wedding was the attraction at the County Fair- today. Miss Leah Jobes of Kennedy and Ernest Linn of Hanoverton, Ohio, were married on the platform before thousands by the Rev. J. Milton Harris of the Baptist church of Allegany, the bride's uncle. The wedding party drove to the fair grounds from Hotel Francis in four open carriages. Coachmen and footmen were attired in livery, with powdered wigs. The Akbar Sanctorum band of Dunkirk played the wedding march and the guard team of review escorted the bride.The fair committee provided a hotel suite and luncheon for the wedding party and family guests, and the prizes included $100 in gold, a mahagony dining set, a library table, and an upholstered chair, along with some smaller gifts.

A wedding to remember! It's too bad they never had children, that would have made a great story to pass on. I guess it's up to me to share it. But I'll leave you with this thought - can you imagine this happening today when weddings are planned months, if not a year in advance? Oh, and did you catch Uncle Milton's name?

It starts with a picture - Matt's bike accident

Often coming across a photo will trigger a memory, like this one of Matt, with his external fixator.

Matt, like his brothers before him, had a paper route when he was an adolescent. One Friday, March 1, 1996, he came home from school, hopped on his bike and was on the way home to start his route; but while crossing Center Street on his bike, he had an accident. An elderly lady, Charlotte MacDonald, was turning into the Jubilee parking lot, and Matt rode his bike into the side of her car. It chills me to think how much worse this could have been. He wasn't wearing a helmet, and suffered a compound fracture of his leg.

A neighbor kid saw Matt lying in the street after the accident, and ran down to our house to tell John. He rushed down there, told the police to let him through, it was his son, and rode with Matt to the hospital. They transferred him to Strong. After making arrangements for the kids, John picked me up in Rochester, where they performed surgery, and put an external fixator on his leg.

His brothers did his paper route that day, but that was pretty much the end of Matthew and the paper route. Come to think of it, it was probably the last time Matt ever rode a bike, as well.