My great grandfather Daniel S. Ogle 1840-1932
I had always heard about them - that is the other wives. Nobody said too much about them, that is about Ella or Nannie, as well, I suppose nobody knew too much about them either. Most couldn't have even told you their names. "We" were, after all, the family he'd created with his third wife Mary, and via his only known child my grandmother.
So after all, why would anyone else matter?
Yet at a very early age, my curiosity about Ella and Nannie, those "other wives" of Daniel S. Ogle did seem to matter. Their relevance to Daniel's story has stayed with me or stayed with whatever genetics causes my pugilism for vetting out the old ghosts. Because of this, or despite it, I have gleaned bits and pieces about "the other wives" mostly trying to match any records of them to the accounts in my memory. The going has not been easy. Indeed, for the past decade or so I've pretty much left Daniel's other wives in the great dustbin of family history unknowns. However, lately, as I've been revisiting "all things great" when it comes to my great-grandparents, I've decided to take another look and to see just what might be out there now about the first two wives of Daniel S...
So let me take you back. The year is 1865 and the War of the Rebellion is winding down and love and reconstruction are in the air...
THE FIRST WIFE:
Above: The family notes of Daniel's niece by marriage, Etta (Mumy) Ogle 
And it looks like Ella was a no-show at court.
Ah, yes, post-Civil War era love. It's the stuff you dream about while sitting in a rebel prison, right? What else should a guy think about while waiting for General Grant to set him free?
Why love of course.
Above: The inside of Libby Prison one of three places Daniel was held during the war.
Anyway, I digress.
Daniel likely met his first wife, Ella J. Baldwin, right after the war. Ella is certainly the most elusive. I'm still working on getting a copy of the vitals and better clarifying the exact spot where he and the lovely and talented Miss Ella J. Baldwin were married. What's certain is that the young Daniel S. Ogle married Ella J. Baldwin in 1866, somewhere in Greene County, Pennsylvania, right after The War. (I have since learned that Greene County, Pennsylvania is where West Virginians of that era often eloped to.) I'm committed to the idea that Ella Baldwin was likely a friend of his family "back home."
Looking for love and a normal life after the war (1866) seems like a pretty natural thing to do.
What about the marriage itself you say? Did they love each other?
In a word, call it shortlived.
Ella looks to be gone in a hot minute.
You see, Daniel is noticeably missing any wife (Ella or otherwise) by the 1870 census and absent himself (thus far) from the census of 1880.
So just where are you, Ella? Where is Danny-boy?
Above: Index of Greene County Pennsylvania marriages.
Yes, Daniel's life with Ella and (apparently) brief marriage is shrouded in mystery. The statement below about their marriage was also published in the 1940s by the Daughters of the American Revolution even though Ella is curiously not mentioned in the handwritten family notes left by his niece, the Ogle Family Historian, (and relative to the kid in television's Lost in Space) Mrs. Etta (Mumy) Ogle. These handwritten notes were sent to Daniel's daughter Katheryn Record in the 1960s. (image below)
Hey, Yo cousin Etta! Did we just want to forget all about Ella??? Or did you know...
Above: The family notes of Daniel's niece by marriage, Etta (Mumy) Ogle 
"Daniel S. Ogle to Miss Ella J. Baldwin, both of Marshall County, West Virginia..."
~ National Historical Magazine, Volume 75, page 31
What's a bit interesting about Ella J. Baldwin isn't so much her marriage to Daniel S. Ogle but the possibilities behind her character. If she is indeed the same woman mentioned in accounts in the Wheeling, West Virginia newspapers she must have been quite the wild child of her day. Further, if she is the same Ella Baldwin mentioned in those newspapers of the 1870s West Virginia she abandoned her married (Ogle) surname and developed a case of sticky fingers when it came to her employer's property.
The Wheeling Daily Intelligencer, Wheeling, West Virginia, August 11, 1877, page 4
Frankly, I think that Ella (Baldwin) Ogle must have been quite a whack job. I think that's why Cousin Etta just left her the flock out of all the family accounts. How dare she break his heart???
- Or maybe Daniel just dodged a quick bullet when it came to old Hot Ella.
There's no doubt that his marriage to Ella Baldwin met with irreconcilable differences. Further, it looks like Ella never accompanied him to Kansas. There doesn't seem to be any evidence that she was ever there at all. On the surface, she appears to have abandoned him, and a decade or so later, when our lusty hero Daniel S. Ogle, wanted to get married again, he was finally forced to sue for divorce.
In the end, we may never know what happened to Ella. If she holds true to what clues she left behind, perhaps she was up to her old disappearing tricks again, this time in Ohio:
Hey, Ella! Is that you?
Guess we'll never know.
THE SECOND WIFE:
For everything Ella (Baldwin) Ogle was or might have been, Daniel's second wife, Nannie Hill was not. If Ella was his erstwhile disappearing bride, Nannie Hill was his stable rock. Divorced from Ella Baldwin in January of 1876, Daniel remarried Nancy "Nannie" Hill in October of that same year. Oddly, both of these marriages took place in Pennsylvania. Since Daniel Ogle was already living in Kansas by 1870, it's curious that he married a girl seemingly from Pennsylvania, and that he also married for a second time - again in Pennsylvania.
However, as with his first wife Ella Baldwin, Nannie Hill's family appears to also have had strong ties to Wheeling, West Virginia. (Nannie's parents are buried there in Wheeling.) I believe that Daniel, even though he lived in Kansas by 1870 went home to West Virginia to "find a wife," one that was perhaps (again as with Ella) also a friend to or "suggested" to him by the Ogle family.
This time things were different though. Love was in the air.
Nannie (Hill) Ogle went back to Kansas with Daniel. They lived in various places around Kansas but ultimately settled in Franklin County, and in the town of Pomona. "Pomona, Kansas" is a place that would prove significant later on to Daniel and indeed to all our lives.
Daniel and Nannie were married for twenty-five years.
And yes, Mrs. Nannie Ogle died.
It's about here however that I need to mention one of those rumors that echo in my mind about Nannie Ogle. The rumor is/was that she and Daniel were the parents of twins that didn't survive. Further, that Nannie never got over the death of her twins and that this was (somehow) a factor in Nannie's own death. There isn't any more to the rumor than this. I can't even tell you where or who I heard it from. There's a chance it came down to me through the nieces of my great-grandmother Mary, his third wife.
Hell, maybe I just dreamt it up.
I am an old man.
It's hard to tell what are true memories from what's just made-up crap floating around in my old man's mind.
In any event, the rumor about twins or Nannie's death because of them (she was after all fifty years old-ish when she died) appears to be untrue. Daniel and Nannie Ogle state in the 1900 census that they have no living children and never did. (I suppose the intent of the question on the 1900 census could be taken a couple of different ways.)
No, Nannie Ogle didn't pass away because of any of this.
But make no mistake, Nannie Ogle was very, very, sick.
I think it's kind of messy how hope springs eternal and how Daniel and Nannie surely had to battle the demons and terrors of breast cancer. In addition to this, (and if the accounts about "a cure from a friend in Paola" are true) they likely chased after false cures and false hopes.
I think Nannie Ogle was a proud lady who graciously put on a brave face all the way to the bitter end. Her dignified notice to "inform my Pomona friends" is a touching tribute to a woman who was not going down without a fight.
It's a fight we've seen lost too many times. Nannie Ogle would be no exception.
I will always wonder what she and Daniel were doing in Pike County, Illinois in the year 1900. Nannie's last notice in the Kansas newspaper is from 1899. I think by then, Nannie's cancer must have advanced so badly that Daniel would have done anything she asked him to do - even move to Illinois.
Perhaps there was a doctor there who promised them a cure. I rather think though that Nannie, knowing that her life was likely waning wanted simply to be closer to family. I can't prove this with any census records - yet. It only just feels right. Because you see, by 1901 Nannie Ogle is dead.
Rest in peace, Nannie Ogle. My how different things would have been if you had lived.
There is something curious about Daniel's second wife though, or curious as it relates to his third wife Mary. Remember that town of Pomona, Kansas?
It is likely that Nannie knew Mary, or at least her family, and knew her quite well.
THE THIRD WIFE:
I'm not going to say a great deal about Daniel's third wife, Mary E. Kraus. Anyone reading this likely knew her or would have known of her. She became the somewhat iconic "Grandma Ogle" in our family, a Mayflower descendant of the highest order and a stoic hard-hat for often indefensible Republican values.
And, I loved her dearly.
Nevertheless, she was a fifteen-year-old bride.
Yes, a fifteen-year-old girl who married a sixty-one-year-old man.
I guess I'm supposed to be creeped out here, and intellectually I am. However, in terms of my family's history, "It is what it is..."
As you can see below, the fake news of the day tended to gloss over the facts - making Daniel a few years younger than he actually was and the young Miss Kraus a respectable "sixteen" years old - all as if this would somehow legitimize the marriage in the news.
That the marriage of Daniel Ogle to young Mary Kraus was "unusual" even for the times did not go unnoticed. News of their marriage appeared in August of 1901 in no less than twenty-five newspapers throughout Kansas - even making its way into the prestigious The Kansas City Star (image above) and making its way also into neighboring Nebraska newspapers.
Most of the announcements lauded Daniel Ogle's service in the Civil War. Nearly all of them remarked on his age and cloaked hers. I did find one announcement that seemed to tell the tale more truthfully than others. It's from this particular announcement that I've chosen the title of this tale.
The word is "charivaried."
Okay, to this all I could say was, um, Wow!? Broken windows? Busted screen doors? Quite the old Kansas wedding party blowout. It's hard to think of our "Grandma Ogle" at a free-for-all hillbilly wedding shindig style "hooten-nanny." I liked this press release in that it was honest about just who the bride and groom were and not trying to hide their ages in the sensationalism of their story.
Reading it was when I noticed the word "charivaried. " The word sort of stopped me. What the flock did that mean - that the bride and groom had been "charivaried?" It turns out that this is a word (obviously not used much anymore) that means to "celebrate loudly" but it is also a word used to chastise people, persons, or events e.g., weddings, which are disapproved of. It is a way of "making noise" over someone or something that may be ill-thought of - like maybe a sixty-one-year-old guy marrying a fifteen-year-old girl. Just saying...
I gotta say too, the writer of this piece about Daniel and Mary chose his words carefully and allowed them to have multiple meanings.
As I mentioned before, I think Mary Kraus knew her predecessor Nannie Ogle. Pomona, Kansas is a small town. In the year 1900, only a little over five hundred people were living there. I'm not sure why Daniel was in such a hurry to get married after Nannie's death. I mean Nannie died in March and he's already married to the fifteen-year-old girl by the following August? Seriously dude?! I guess what's equally disturbing here is that they were married at "the residence of the bride's grandfather." Now by 1900, the only grandfather Mary (Kraus) Ogle had left was the Revered Luther Newcomb - an eighty-year-old man. Wake up Grandpa?!
I mean who's gonna pay for that broken window and bent screen doors?
Time to pony up Daniel Ogle.
Daniel with his third wife Mary (Kraus) Ogle
Theirs was however a love story - despite what people might have said it was or predicted it would turn out. They were married nearly thirty-two years making this Daniel's longest marriage.
Anyway - I thought you might like to know about Dan's first two wives.
Oh, and that all things charivaried don't necessarily turn out bad.
The third wife of Daniel Ogle, Mary Kraus, with some of her great-grandchildren.
Rest in peace all you rowdy old souls.
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