The St. Charles herald. [volume] (Hahnville, La.) 1873-1993, 1885-09-26

A marriage license was issued in
Chicago short time ago, connected
with which there is story as strange
as any ever conceived in the brain of a
professional story-teller. 1t is a story
which requires not the art of the story
teller to make it interesting; the bare
facts are enough. The parties to the
contract were married over seven years
ago, were never divorced, and yet pro-
cured license to get married again.
To begin at the beginning:
In the spring of 1873 Wilhelm Her.
mann emigrated from his native home
in Wurtemburg, Germany, intending
to settle with some relatives in small
town in the State of Louisiana. When
he got as far as New Orleans he de-
clded to stop there some time, and
about two months after his arrival he
was married to Amelia Rettich, the
daughter of an old German resident of
that city. Three days after. his mar
rage he was enticed by chance &C.
quaintance into one of the low beer
saloons on the levee at New Orleans,
was drugged, robbed and carried
aboard German trading vessel bound
for Newcastle, England. 1t was eight
months later before the vessel reached
that port. Immediately on gaining his
liberty Hermann sought the German
Consul at Newcastle, and narrated the
story of his wrongs. -He begged the
Consul to assist him to return to his
wife and home at New Orleans without
delay; but the Consul refused, saying
that, as Hermann had no naturalization
papers or anything in the way of legal
claim on the United States, he was still
a German citizen. Then the Consul
sent for the Captain of the vessel and
compelled him to deliver Hermann to
the German authorities. On his arrival
at Berlin he was pressed into the army
and bound over to four years. term
of military service. He underwent the
drudgery and severe discipline to which
unwilling recruits are subjected in the
German army for space of nearly
three years, when, seeing a chance to
escape from the country, he deserted.
All this time he had been constantly
Hooking forward with an all-abiding
faith and hope to areunion with his
bride. He reached New Orleans ex-
actly four years after his first arrival in
that city. He then learned that his
wife, thinking he was dead, had mar
ried again and had left the city, no one
knewgSwhither. He. started out to
search for her. For nearly alyear he
WANDERED over the greater, part of the
Southern States, following many clews
which turned QUITO be false, Until at
last he received a letter from herself
s. She told him that she had given him up
for lost until she CHANGED to see his
advertisement for her on stray page
of New Orleans newspaper; that she
had married William. Chapman; that
her second husband had been rather
unfortunate in business, Aahd had
changed his place of residence several
times hoping for better luck; and that
they had now settled down in small
frontier town in Western Kansas. She
proposed to leave Chapman and go
with him, her own true husband, if he
came for her. He Immediately started
for Tabuta, Kan, where his wife, re-
sided, arriving there five days later.
The day following his arrival William
Chapman, the second husband, was
found lying dead on his own doorstep,
with a bullet through his brain. Two
days later Hermann was lodged in the
county jail on charge of willful MUIR
der.
The morning following the arrest the
prisoner was taken before the local
Justice for examination. A crowd OF
rough, bearded frontiersmen thronged
the little room where the proceedings
were held. Justice was usually swift
and stern in that district; in serious
crimes Judge Lynch reigned supreme.
In this case, so far as the spectators
knew, the prisoner had been arrested
on mere suspicion as being a stranger.
If evidence turned up to prove him
guilty there was no Jail strong enough
to hold MIN from the vengeance of the
people, nor any legal power sufficient
to stay the execution of his death war
rant or punish those who carried it Gus.