Falling in love was dangerous for these historical couples, yet they did it anyway, and, unfortunately, many of them had to suffer the consequences.
The marriage that ended in an arrest
Getting married shouldn’t be something that involves the police, but that’s exactly what happened to Richard and Mildred Loving. Richard was white, while Mildred was Black and Native American, meaning they legally weren’t allowed to be married in Virginia. That didn’t stop them, though.
The pair decided to go to Washington, D.C. in June 1958 to finally get hitched, although that wasn’t the end of the problem. Police arrested them in their bedroom when they returned home. Both Lovings were given suspended prison sentences, with the condition that they’d leave Virginia for 25 years. The couple fought the law and won their case in the Supreme Court in 1967.
The wedding that became a courtroom battle
It’s not like Leonard Rhinelander’s family was thrilled about his choice of wife. No, he was from a wealthy New York family, and he secretly married Alice Jones, a working-class, mixed-race woman. They married in October 1924. As you can probably imagine, it was a scandal.
His family soon learned what happened, and their marriage hit the front pages of the newspapers. Leonard tried to get an annulment. He claimed that Alice had hidden her ancestry from him, and during the following trial, Alice had to partially undress in court to show her complexion. But the jury didn’t believe Leonard’s claim and rejected it.
The letters that survived for decades
Rose Cleveland was the sister of President Grover Cleveland, and she had a secret she couldn’t tell the world. In 1889, Rose met a woman named Evangeline Simpson in Florida. The pair soon fell in love, and they began writing rather passionate letters to each other.
But this wasn’t a time when same-sex relationships were accepted, especially not for a former President’s sister. Evangeline married Bishop Henry Whipple in 1896. The romance between Rose and Evangeline continued, however, and they reunited in Italy. They lived there together until Rose died in 1918.
The affection hidden in old photographs
Glenn Carrington was a black man involved quite deeply in Harlem’s artistic world during the 1920s. Harry Dana was the white grandchild of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Despite their different backgrounds, the two men fell in love and had a close relationship for years.
We actually have some of their surviving letters and photographs, showing just how much they cared for each other. It was quite remarkable, really, as being gay carried serious risks at the time. In 1935, Dana was arrested on a morals charge and was forced to leave his family’s Cambridge home. The pair stayed close into their old age.
The president’s secret wedding
Then-president John Tyler didn’t seem to care what people thought about his love life. The 54-year-old widower decided to marry a woman named Julia Gardiner on June 26, 1844. She was 24 years old at the time. That made her younger than several of his children.
At first, Gardiner rejected Tyler, but then changed her mind after her father died in an explosion. The pair got hitched privately in New York City, less than four months after the tragedy. But the age difference was a huge problem. So huge, in fact, that even former President John Quincy Adams spoke out against it.
A marriage that crossed the color line
Frederick Douglass was known for being a Black civil rights leader. But even among his most loyal supporters, his marriage to Helen Pitts was controversial, as she was white and he was Black. He was also 66, and she was 46, when they got married.
Members of each person’s family opposed the relationship, but they went ahead with it anyway, despite the fact that interracial marriages were pretty taboo. The couple traveled around Europe and North Africa together, and their marriage lasted until Douglass died in February 1895.
A private love in Chicago
Women’s rights activist Jane Addams and Mary Rozet Smith had a very unusual relationship for the 1890s. They were both women. Initially, they met through Addams’ social work at Chicago’s Hull House, and they soon became romantic partners, staying together for decades.
Although Addams referred to their relationship as a marriage, same-sex marriage wasn’t legally recognized anywhere in America at the time. They wrote letters to each other, pouring out their hearts. But Addams asked for many of them to be destroyed due to fears that the relationship would be discovered. Smith died of pneumonia in 1934.
The affair behind Taliesin
The story of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Borthwick Cheney sounds like something from a film. But it was real. Wright, a famous designer, was hired by Edwin Cheney as an architect for his home. Wright ended up having an affair with Cheney’s wife, Mamah, while they were both married.
In 1909, he left his wife and six children to travel around Europe with Mamah, and as you can imagine, the newspapers had a field day. The pair settled at Taliesin, Wright’s Wisconsin estate, in 1911. Yet their relationship came to an abrupt end in August 1914 when a servant murdered Mamah, her two children, and four others. The servant then set the house on fire.
The presidential letters kept under lock
For about fifteen years, Warren G. Harding had a secret. The future president had been having an affair with a woman named Carrie Fulton Phillips, even though both of them were married. Harding actually sent Carrie lots of love letters.
When he went to the Senate, their relationship continued until Harding’s wife, Florence Harding, found out. The Phillips family went back to Europe. Interestingly, their letters didn’t become public until the Library of Congress finally released them on July 29, 2014.
The reporter who became a confidante
First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok were friends. At least, that’s what it seemed like from the outside, as in private, they were far more affectionate than you’d imagine. Their relationship began during the 1932 presidential campaign of Eleanor’s husband, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Hickok was working as a reporter for the Associated Press at the time.
During one story, she was supposed to be covering Eleanor. The two women ended up growing incredibly close to each other, and Hickok fell in love with the future First Lady. Roosevelt did appear to share her feelings for a short time, but it wasn’t meant to be. Eleanor was married, for one. She was a potential First Lady. Hickok eventually stopped reporting on the Roosevelts.
The romance watched by the FBI
John F. Kennedy learned something strange in 1941. The FBI was keeping tabs on his girlfriend. No, it wasn’t Jackie Kennedy, but instead, Danish journalist Inga Arvad. Kennedy was working in naval intelligence at the time, while Arvad had previously met Adolf Hitler. She also attended the 1936 Berlin Olympics as his guest.
That immediately made American officials suspicious, and they feared that she could’ve been a German spy. They never found proof of it, however. The FBI continued to monitor her communications, and Kennedy was transferred to South Carolina in January 1942. Their relationship didn’t last much longer.
The widow whose marriage wasn’t recognized
James Peters and Josephine Steele spent over five decades together and had ten children. But apparently, that wasn’t enough to make their marriage legal in Virginia. It all began in the late 1860s when James returned from serving in the Union Army during the Civil War. He was Black.
Josephine, however, was a white orphan, meaning a marriage between them was illegal. They decided to run away together and built a life near Manassas. In 1923, James passed away. The state refused to recognize Josephine as his wife, though, and that meant she never received a military widow’s pension. How sad.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
For better or worse: 11 destructive historical marriages that ended in flames
There are many ways that a marriage can go wrong, but somehow, a few famous couples managed to turn theirs into stories involving murder and so much worse.
For better or worse: 11 destructive historical marriages that ended in flames
