The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1888-02-25
THE WIVES OF SINGER.
The Great Inventor Had Only Five of
Them.

Them.
From the Nctc York Graphic.
The publication of the approaching
marriage of Miss Singer to the Duke
Decazers, a French nobleman of
high rank, recalls some curious
stories about Singer, the sewing
machine inventor, and his numerous
wives and progeny.
When Isaac NJ. Singer was chop
ping wood around Schaghticoke, n.
Y, in 1890, he never had an idea
that he would invent a sewing mach
inc that would bring him millions
and that his daughters would be
spending them in buying up titles on
the other side of the Atlantic. He
was living from hand to mouth and
he married stout Irish girl named
Catharine Haley and moved to
Waterloo. He was shiftless, bright
sort of fellow, irregular in his way
of living and with a natural bent for
anything but hard work. He took
to the stage, and was at one time
somewhat Of a popular favorite, but
he never seemed to have any money.
One night while playing in Balti-
more he became enamored of a
young woman named Mary Ann
Sponsor, and promptly married her.
Then he and his new wife started
out, and for fourteen years worked
as actors in temperance pieces
through the churches all over the
country, and were wretchedly poor.
They drifted finally to Chicago, and
there Singer invented a reaping
machine and later on a machine for
carving type, and both of these
brought him some money.
About 1850 he had completed the
inventions which perfected the Singer
sewing machine and, with a lawyer
named Clark, had formed the firm of
Singer & Co and had begun to pile
up his wealth. From that time until
1868 these two men grew richer and
richer every day until they counted
their fortunes by the millions.
In the meantime Singer came to
New York and settled down in one
of the most stylish houses in the
city, at II Fifth Avenue, and he and
his second wife began to do a good
deal into society. He and everybody
else seemed to have forgotten his
legal wife, who with her two children
managed by hard work to live over
IN New Jersey, and never once
thought that the rich Singer whom
she used to hear about occasionally
was the man for whom she had in
her early days toiled and struggled.
In 1860, just twenty four years after
he left her, Singer quietly obtained
a divorce from Catharine Haley, and
at that time his second wife had al
ready borne him ten children.
Three months after he had OBJ
tanned the divorce he abandoned his
wife No. and went to Europe.
After he had gone it WAS discovered
that he had been married under
assumed names to two other women
in New York City: One of them he
had married as Henry Matthews,
and five children had been the result
of the union. and the other whom he
had wed as Chas. Merritt had borne,
him one son.
While Singer was abroad he pub
licly marrieda French woman named
Isabelle Bryce, and taking her, his
fifth venture in matrimony, to Paris,
became quite lion among the
money spenders of that gay city.
He and she, the only woman to whom
he was supposed to have been faith
full, finally went to England, where
he pun chased castle and an estate,
and died in 1873.
His five wives and most of his
twenty-four children were alive at
the time of his death, but the six
who were born to him by his last
matrimonial bargain received the
greater portion of his fortune. Of
course there was litigation, and there
is some yet going on, but the heart
less old fellow had long before his
death SO distributed his property
that there was scarcely any necessity
for him to leave a will. When the
litigation first began it became ap-
parent that new and up to that time
unheard of claimants would crop I'D
on every side, for every month
seemed to bring forth a new woman
with unimpeachable proofs that Sim
ger had married her. Indeed it is
not more than a year ago since an
enterprlslng newspaper man found
another of Singers widows living in
central Pennsylvania with two chill
dren that bore his name.
The people who are getting them
selves telegraphed about over the
cable are the children by Singers
fifth wife, and she has kept herself
rather prominently before the public,
while the children of his first and
only legal wife have long since talked
themselves and their affairs beyond
the reach of comment upon their
fathers misdeeds.
Scarlet Fever