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Before singles bars, personal ads and online dating, meeting people with a mind toward romantic entanglement could be gut-wrenchingly difficult, wildly frustrating, and if a man didn't conduct himself with priestly detachment in the presence of an unmarried female, potentially ruinous.
Between the Mann Act, which could send a man to federal prison for years merely for crossing state lines with an underage woman, and mores governing courtship way past restrictive, it's a wonder U.S. populations didn't take a colossal nosedive.But they didn't, thanks to the determination of men like Stauntonian L.B. Agee, who in 1926 eloped to Baltimore in a blinding snowstorm with his fiancee, Ellen Fauver. Marooned at a deserted hotel without a taxicab in sight, the desperate groom ran frantically around the lobby, a Baltimore newspaper noted, "appealing to everyone from the head bellman to the public stenographer for a way to get himself and his bride to their marital appointment. But the only vehicle in the hotel that was in operation was the elevator, and that was running the wrong way."
Agee managed to flag down a cab, but the driver already had a fare. The groom pleaded with the cabbie, and when that didn't work, offered to buy the cab. Finally the fare surrendered his seat to the couple, who went on to tie the knot.
Many suitors were far less successful than Agee. There was Joseph Todd, who got carried away with a young woman only to get carried off to jail soon afterward.
His offense? On Jan. 30, 1899, he invited Jessie Rodgers, an unchaperoned visitor from Highland County, up to his rented room in Staunton's Gas House Alley. To get her up there, he resorted to an act so heinous that few men of his time would have dared think of such a thing. Having invited her up, he told her it was his sister's room and that his sister was sick, and that he needed Rodgers' help in caring for her.
But that wasn't what got Todd arrested. According to testimony given during the spectator-packed trial two months later, the defendant "on reaching [his] room . . . took off his hat and overcoat and asked [Rodgers] to take a seat and take off her wraps. [He] then said that this was not his sister's house, but his own, and wanted witness to stay with him. [Todd] would give her money and board her at Porter House."
Then Todd did the unthinkable: he walked over and sat on her lap. The horrified girl burst into wracking sobs, begging him "to remember his own sisters" and to please let her go. Todd quickly reconsidered his proposal and removed himself from her lap. Putting his hat and overcoat back on, he escorted her as far as Mary Baldwin Seminary before heading home again. Jessie Rodgers reported the incident to police a day or so later, at which point a manhunt ensued. It wasn't long before local authorities tracked Todd down and placed him under arrest.
His trial went on for two days and brought to the stand dozens of witnesses. Though none had a bad word to say about the defendant, the jury couldn't get over the fact that he had sat on Rodger's lap. After they found him guilty, the judge handed Todd a three-year prison sentence, whereupon the convicted lap-sitter was allowed to repair to a local saloon to drown his sorrows before being carted off to jail.
Saul P. Farren came up with a better way to find love when, foreshadowing modern dating practices, he placed an ad in the Leader in May 1921, seeking "any woman, at any age, crippled or blind or hard of hearing, if decent, and won't fight." Mrs. Mary S. Lane of Green Street responded as follows:
Dear Mr. Farren:
In answer to the enclosed clipping, appearing in a local newspaper, I would like to correspond with you with a view to matrimony. I assure you that my health is good, that my hearing is sound, and I don't fight. If you will do unto me as I do unto you I see no reason why we should not get along nicely and be extremely happy together.
"Well, who can tell?" the Leader concluded richly. "Perhaps Cupid directed his arrow with unusual accuracy when this Staunton woman viewed ... the account of a lonesome, domestic, war-abhorring, home-loving Pennsylvania man's search for a life-time companion to assist in navigating his matrimonial craft, once he has enlisted the much-needed crew of one."
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