Elisabetha did not remain single for long. In February 1800 she married a widower, Vincent Meyer, after the requisite banns were published three times.
Imagine her sense of betrayal when she discovered that Vincent had concealed another marriage! She went before the town officials and made a proclamation to that effect in August 1801, declaring that by his action of having hidden this gross impediment to their own marriage, he had in effect prostituted her. She denied all knowledge of his actions and was granted a severing of their marriage.
Wait. I don’t know whether I translated those word endings correctly!
The other version is a bigger scandal to the Schmelzer family.
Imagine Vincent’s sense of betrayal when he found out and forced Elisabetha to go before the town officials and swear that she concealed an impediment to her marriage to Vincent in the form of another marriage (maybe Jean Pierre did not die after all; maybe he deserted), and that she prostituted herself by so doing!
In any case, the marriage officially ended, and Elisabetha and Vincent both disappeared from all other records of the town.
I’d have moved far away too, no matter which way the scandal went.
Photo adapted from: Benny Trapp - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12570624
And now, you Latin scholars, help me out with the endings here! Who did what to whom?
It turns out that Vincent had a family with his first wife, Maria Schweitzer, and in 1816 their daughter Magdalena married the youngest brother of Elisabetha Schmelzer. Vincent signed their marriage entry in the parish book as a witness with his usual X, the same as he did on his own marriage and annulment.
ReplyDeleteSince Vincent and his first wife were apparently both from St Ingbert, and since he was apparently still living there in 1816, I suppose that his first wife, Maria Schweitzer, was known to have died, while the whereabouts of the French soldier must have been in doubt.
Not looking good for you, Elisabetha!