On a lovely fall afternoon in November 1897, a handsome young couple disembarked at the St. Paul Avenue rail depot in Downtown Milwaukee. They made their way to the Methodist Episcopal Church on 12th Street, found a pastor and were quickly married. The couple came from Chicago, one of hundreds—perhaps thousands—of Illinois couples to take advantage of the lax regulations on marriages in Wisconsin in the late 1800s by making the short trip north and securing quickie nuptials. The couple’s plight was typical; the family of the bride did not care for the young man with whom their daughter had fallen in love. The groom was Warren W. Beckwith of Mount Pleasant, Iowa. Beckwith was a jock said to care more for sports than books. The bride was Jessie H. Lincoln, the youngest daughter of Robert Todd Lincoln—the only surviving son of President Abraham Lincoln.
After their low-key wedding and a mid-afternoon lunch at the Plankinton House Hotel, the couple returned home to tell the Lincolns about their marriage. Her father was little moved and still refused to accept his daughter’s young beau. “We still disapprove of the young man as much as we did at the outset,” he said.
Yet one did not need to have presidential lineage to get a “Milwaukee wedding.” Throughout the 1890s, one needed only a way into town, a willing partner and a few dollars cash to be wed in the Cream City. Whereas neighboring states required a government-issued license, Wisconsin required only that a marriage certificate be signed by an authorized person—a representative of a church or justice of the peace. As early as 1892, the Milwaukee Journal was reporting on the “fad” of “strange and runaway couples” from Chicago making the short steamboat trip to Milwaukee for no-trouble nuptials. City clergy worried about claims that Milwaukee marriages were executed with no more solemnity “than exercised by a grocer in selling a salted mackerel or a bar of soap.”
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With the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, interest in Milwaukee marriages spiked. Horse cart hack drivers—the cabbies of their time—would crowd the riverside docks in search of giddy couples. Some even reportedly got kickbacks from willing preachers and justices for delivering newly arrived business to them. One pastor claimed to have married 60 couples brought north by the Goodrich Steamship Line on a single Sunday during the fair.
By the mid ’90s, Milwaukee had a reputation as “America’s Gretna Green,” the Scottish village long famous for as a wedding destination for “runaway” couples. While some bristled at the city’s image as a “marriage mill,” others embraced the concept. Reverend Wesley Hunsberger of the Grand Avenue Methodist Church performed so many of the ceremonies that he became known as “the marrying parson of Milwaukee.” During the tourist season, Hunsberger saw a steady stream of couples in the back parlor of his office, located near the Goodrich river docks between Michigan and Clybourn. During peak times, couples would stand patiently at his front steps, waiting to be waved in after the previous set of newlyweds was led out the door.
Hunsberger never used set fees for his services, instead telling grooms they could give him anywhere from $5 to $50. “There is no regular charge,” he told a reporter, “only what you wish.” The Reverend said the couples who came to him were from all walks of life: actors, lawyers, doctors, farmers and ministers. He noted, however, “The brides are usually shorter and younger than the grooms.” Hunsberger became a kind of minor celebrity for his marriages. Crowds of curious passersby were known to gather near his office during busier hours. At least once, he had to call the police to chase away a mob of gawkers.
As the turn of the century neared, city and state officials began to tire of the idea of Milwaukee as a quickie marriage destination. The city’s registrar of records was especially perturbed by the tendency of those performing the services not to keep proper records. Newspapers in Chicago had been reporting notices of Milwaukee weddings of which the city could find no paper evidence. Others objected to the idea of civil servants and men of the cloth padding their wallets by performing marriage rites for anyone with the whim to be wed. At least one clergyman, the Journal reported, was riding the Goodrich boats to Chicago and back, soliciting his services to anyone who appeared in the mood.
In 1899, the state passed the True Marriage License bill, which required couples to secure a city-issued license no less than five days before the ceremony. Immediate marriages could now be performed only with a judge’s orders. The bill ended Milwaukee’s reign as the American Gretna Green, but did little to dampen the spirits of truly determined elopers. By the 1930s, Waukegan, Ill., had become a destination for love-struck Wisconsin youths. An estimated 6,000 Wisconsin couples were wed there in 1934. The Milwaukee Journal reported that the Illinois state legislature was being pressured to take action against the practice.
Matthew J. Prigge is a local author and historian. See what he’s up to at matthewjprigge.com.
