Couple Who Divorced Almost Remarried Each Other

After 25 Years Apart, They Didn’t Recognize Their Ex Spouse

There are stories that are so bizarre you think they cannot be true. This brief article from The Meridan Daily Journal ran September 1, 1906.  Several other newspapers including The New York Tribune (also reproduced below) and Washington Times would tell the tale as well.

Didn’t Know Suitor Was Ex-Husband

Divorced 25 Years Ago, Nearly
Married Again Without Recognizing Each Other

HARTFORD. Sept. 1.—Cupid’s work of a year was undone at the threshold of the altar here today.

Discovering that they had been divorced from each other twenty-five years ago, James Phelps and Mrs’ Ruth Harris, who were to have been married by the Rev. H. M Thompson, pastor of the Memorial Baptist church, renewed their old disagreement and separated just a few hours before they were to have been re-united in marriage. The two had not met for a quarter of a century until a little over a year ago Neither recognized the other. And it was not until they were ready to get their marriage license that the discovery was made.

Phelps, who has a farm near Rockville, is more than 60 years old and his bride is about ten years his junior. They were married thirty years ago. Quarrels almost immediately arose and the two separated, the bride going to live with relatives in the West.

Mrs. Phelps (as she was then) secured a divorce from her husband in the courts of Illinois five years later on the ground of desertion, and soon afterward married Harris, with whom she lived until his death a few years ago. Then she re(turned to Connecticut. Phelps met his former wife at the home of friends a year ago. Strangely enough the two did not recognize each other.

The NEW YORK TRIBUNE

FOUND THEY’D BEEN WED BEFORE.
Divorced Pair Fail to Recognize Each Other —Nearly Married Again.

[By Telegraph to The Tribune.]

Hartford. Conn, Aug. 31.—Discovering that they had been divorced from each other twenty (sic)  years ago, James Phelps and Mrs. Ruth Harris cancelled their preparations to be married last evening, and parted after quarreling over the subject that caused their separation a quarter of a century ago. The two were married thirty years ago, but soon separated. A few years ago Mrs. Harris came to Connecticut, where she met Phelps. Neither recognized the other, and it was not until Mrs. Harris told of her former matrimonial adventure that they learned they had been husband and wife once before.

There was no follow-up story in any newspaper. Apparently, James Phelps and Ruth Harris did not re-marry.

The question that will forever remain a mystery: how in the world did the pair not have a clue for a year while seeing each other that they were once married?