Imagine you’re drinking your morning tea or coffee and you open up the newspaper to find this headline  “Has Plenty Of Wives – Atlanta Woman on Trail of Her Husband”. That would be a conversation starter for the day for sure.


Now imagine it’s 111 years later and you’re researching the Stong Building for your Chattanooga History Series and you see that headline. Obviously, if you’re me, that brings up about one trillion new questions and leads to a new series on the Chattin with Coie blog.


 

The Original Newspaper Article

Weird News Summary



Charles A Wellis sometimes went by Charles A Wellnitz and had been married a few times.  He was a barber in Chattanooga when he was arrested for bigamy after his fourth wife found out about his fifth wife and came up from Atlanta to have him arrested. Now, in our dude Charlies defense his 4th wife had filed for divorce 2 years earlier. Pauline, his 4th wife, said the case was still pending in Georgia.



Further Research



You already know ya girl did not just leave it at that. After doing some further research it showed Charles A Wellis was acquitted of the charges as he at least had a “partial divorce” before re-marrying. Pauline seemed to be pretty upset about this and even accused him of being a deserter and was quoted in the newspaper as saying if the courts said so she would not hesitate to see “his life and his blood taken”.  February 27th he produced a commendation from Captain Castner of the Fourth Infantry proving that that claim was false as well.