Leta's niece June, my sister Michelle's great-grandmother-in-law, believed that Leta was married eleven times. My own grandfather, Leta’s son-in-law, had told me seven. As he remembered several when he set me on my quest to research her life and create this work, I used his number as a guide. Plus I suppose, even to me, eleven seemed a bit excessive and, well, embarrassing. She was my beloved great-grandmother, after all, and religious, as am I. It was enough to know that she was married seven times and dated other men.
Over the course of the past few months, I have been piecing together her life and marriage time-line from a variety of sources, and every time I visit the Oakland Family History Center, a county courthouse or cemetery, I learn more detail.
As a writer, I know that when it comes to fascinating lives, I couldn’t make up anything equal to what actually happened, nor do I want to—until, well, the historic sources or leads dry up. Right now I am glad that I haven’t given up and been proved right again.
Most recently, after a somewhat long, fruitless research period at the Family History Center, I started to look for the elusive seventh husband: The chicken farmer with 12 children Leta married for one week. The only point of reference I had was that my grandparents were married at the time, so this occurred after 1936. Although I know that her fourth husband Bob Fields died in 1946, I do not yet know when or how her marriage to husband number three Ora Freeman (from 1927) concluded, nor when she married Mr. Fields. These puzzle pieces are still part of my research, and I was stuck.
So I tried a new tactic. As women generally change their surnames with marriage, I typed into the search engine for Ohio Marriages, “Leta Freeman.” (Actually, I was working my way through her known last names.)
Whoa! I didn’t find out what I was looking for specifically, but I did find husband number seven – or rather, husband number four.
On March 2, 1929, Leta Freeman married Leech F. Hoose of New London, Ohio in Wood County, Ohio. The groom, age 32, listed his marital status as widowed, and the bride, age 35, listed her status as divorced.
Mr. Leech IS NOT the aforementioned chicken farmer. He IS a new discovery, and husband number eight, the fourth man she married. Right now this bumps Bob Fields to five, Claud Bassett to six, chicken farmer with 12 kids to seven and Richard Eckman to eight (I’m guessing that chicken farmer most likely comes between Fields and Bassett or now, Leech and Fields.)
For now this is all I know, but having been rejuvenated by this discovery, I am eager to pursue more (as well as reconfigure a bit the structure of the novel already in process). Between this marriage in 1929 and the death of Robert Fields (to whom she was married during World War II) in 1946, Leta’s life could include, well, almost anything!
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