I wish I had known Melba A. Burks, but she died in 2011 before I moved to this area. Her grave in Fairplay Cemetery near my home has attracted much attention because Mrs. Burks' tombstone lists all 12 of her husbands, including one man she married twice.
Melba had to be fascinating, as she was described by one neighbor as "a very strong woman ... a military veteran, she was an over-the-road truck driver, a military police [officer], a real estate broker ... and she loved her mules and chickens." I suspect 13 marriages and divorces might be a record in Arkansas history. But nothing is certain when it comes to matters of the heart.
As historian Margaret Ross has written, "the basic divorce laws of Arkansas Territory were made by the General Assembly of Louisiana Territory in 1807, with later amendments by Missouri Territory and by Arkansas Territory." Both men and women sued for divorce under these statutes. The first issue of the state's first newspaper, published in November 1819, contained a notice that James Latham's wife was divorcing him.
A substantial number of unhappily married people directly petitioned the Legislature for divorces, with two petitions being presented to the first meeting of the General Assembly of 1820.
Disdain for divorce and a distaste for delving into the messy facts behind the petitions made them unpopular with the Legislature. Meeting in the second session, territorial legislators in both houses voted not to hear any more divorce petitions. The vote in the House was unanimous.
In his old age, Delegate Daniel T. Witter of Hempstead County recalled the 1825 meeting of the Legislature when petitioners were disappointed by Gov. George Izard's veto of all bills of divorce. Witter recalled one woman's plight: "... for some time thereafter she and her poor Pilgarlick [a person considered with contempt or pity] of a husband continued to live a sort of cats and dogs life together." Izard's death in 1828 saw the return of directly legislated divorces.
Divorcing couples spanned the social and economic spectrums. In 1833, for example, the Legislature granted a divorce to Nancy Dodge Scott, the wife of Arkansas' first federal marshal, the first clerk of the Territorial General Assembly, and the first state auditor--a notoriously difficult man despite his prominence.
Throughout the 19th century, abandonment or "willful desertion" was the most common grounds cited in divorce proceedings. Historian Janet Allured found that 54 percent of the females seeking divorces in Boone County cited desertion, with a surprising 66 percent of men making the same charge.
A meticulous analysis of Independence County (Batesville area) divorces during the post-Civil War decade (1865-1875) by Marilynn Chlebak also found "the defendant's desertion of the plaintiff 'without just or reasonable cause'" as the major reason for divorces. A majority of the men claiming desertion by their wives had been away serving in the war.
Physical abuse was cited in some divorce petitions. For example, Pope County resident Sarah Crum won a divorce in 1871 from her husband after charging him with striking her "five or six times." Artie Stevens of Boone County charged in a 1908 divorce petition that her husband had "whipped and abused" her for the four years of their marriage.
The Arkansas Supreme Court deserves credit for ruling in 1854 that, as Allured has written, "if love and affection were manifestly absent from a marriage, the union could be terminated."
The court held that divorces could be granted if a husband displayed "rudeness, vulgarity, unmerited reproach, haughtiness, contempt, contumely, studied neglect, intentional incivility, injury, manifest disdain, abusive language, malignant ridicule, and every other plain manifestations of settled hate, alienation and estrangement." Thus, wives did not have to await a beating before seeking a divorce.
A surprising number of divorces were granted to husbands fleeing an abusive wife. In 1904 the Arkansas Supreme Court granted a divorce to C. R. McGee of Marion County because his wife Sarah McGee had "applied opprobrious epithets to [her spouse], and, although a stout, healthy woman, [she] refused to cook for him or do any of the housework, but would eat heartily of the meals he cooks, and then abuse him about the way they were cooked."
Sometimes divorces were granted for simple reasons. In 1868, Mathew Hale was granted a divorce in Pope County because his wife Martha had "absented herself from his bed and board," and stated flatly that "she left him because she did not like him and would not live with him again."
Divorces became more common as the 19th century gave way to the 20th. As Allured has written: "In the Ozark region of the state, families were more likely to be broken by divorce in the 1880s, and just as likely in the decades thereafter, than the typical American family."
Allured has also written of "a growing mutuality between spouses" after the 1893 General Assembly easily adopted laws defining property rights for divorcing women; the woman's entitlement to one-third of her husband's personal property and a life interest in one-third of his realty.
While bigamy seems to be the cause of only a few divorces, one notorious and "muchly married man," a supposed physician named Dr. W.H. Boyd, married 11 women between 1863 and 1885, none of whom he bothered to divorce. Five were Arkansans.
With the passage of time, judges both nationally and in Arkansas began awarding alimony and child support to petitioning wives. In 1866, a woman near Batesville whose husband was living in Texas with another woman received title to 470 acres of land as well as "all the house and kitchen furniture ... the two cows and calves ... one steer and one sow and seven shoats ... as her property forever."
Allured found that in Boone County "while a total of only eight women were awarded alimony in the 30 years preceding 1902, fully 17 received it in the years between 1902 and 1910."
Both world wars of the 20th century caused increases in divorce rates in Arkansas as elsewhere. However, the adoption of a 90-day divorce law by the 1931 Legislature set Arkansas on the road to becoming a divorce haven. This allowed non-residents to qualify for divorces after only three months' residency.
Cities on the edges of the state, such as Texarkana and West Memphis, were inundated with divorce suits, which became highly profitable income for both lawyers and county coffers. In May 1943, 41 divorces were granted on one day in Camden.
Among those who took advantage of the 90-day residency law was a young New Yorker named Winthrop Rockefeller. Today Arkansas and Oklahoma wrestle for the highest divorce rate in the nation.
Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist living near Glen Rose in Hot Spring County. Email him at Arktopia.td@gmail.com. An earlier version of this column appeared on March 8, 2015.
Editorial on 11/24/2019