
September 15, 1898
Alexander Belleville, the East St Louis man whose many matrimonial experiences were recounted in the papers recently, has made a successful attempt to add another wife to his already lengthy list. Belleville is 57 years old and has had seven wives in 42 years, whose terms of service in his household ranged from three hours to thirteen years.
All of them died “on his hands,” as he put it. Their ages varied from 15 years to 40 at the time of union, and collectively they represented a great many types of womanhood. One Native woman with whom he lived the longest was included in the lot. Belleville’s happiest days were passed with his first wife, who was 15 when he married her.
After trying six others with whom he became acquainted, with the various foibles of femininity that come between childhood and old age. Belleville determined that youth was the thing for him in a wife, and so he courted 15-year-old Josephine Miller. It was “Josie” who accompanied him to the marriage license office at the court-house the other day. “Josie” was anxious to become the eighth Mrs. Belleville. “Josie’s” mother went with the couple.

She gave her consent willingly and there was nothing for the recorder to do but issue the license. “Josie” was in a short dress. She hadn’t enough hair to “do up behind” and so it hung down her back in a braid.
She was just a slip of a girl who would have been taken for old man Belleville’s youngest child had it not been for the presence of his son, about 9 years old. Belleville’s oldest son, who is 21 years old, was also of the party. Belleville laughed and chuckled merrily after getting the legal document permitting him to wed the little girl.
September 15, 1898
You would think this would be the end of the story.. But as I looked at the illustration of this young gal I wondered how she was going to keep up with the cooking, cleaning and child bearing.
Then this happened..
St. Louis, Missouri
21 Sep 1899, Thu • Page 8

Sun, Jun 05, 1898 · Page 10
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
St. Louis, Missouri
29 May 1898, Sun • Page 19
Did He or Didn’t He Commit Bigamy? Scoundrel Andrew Whitten
James Watson– Bigamy and Shoes
Begging Your Husband for Forgiveness? What? What? What?
Even if it’s Convenient — You Can’t Marry Your Sister in law
- Sixteen Wives– What Do You Get? Another Day Older and Deeper in Debt
- I’m so Sick of that Same Old Love — Bigamous Relations in Lanark County
- James Watson– Bigamy and Shoes
- A Smith’s Falls “Frustrated Young Love’s Dream” Purdy vs Lenahan
- She Came Back! A Ghost Divorce Story
- One Night in Almonte or Was it Carleton Place?Bigamists?
- How About the Much Married Woman? One for the Murdoch Mystery Files
- The Wedding of Stanley Alexander Jackson and Margaret Elizabeth Forbes
- The Thomas Alfred Code Journal – Letters-Part 15- Code Family– Love and Runaway Marriages
- Odd Ironic Wedding Stories –Or it was Almost Lonely Valley
- Marriage Records Lanark County, Ontario, Canada– Names Names Names
- Till Death Do Us Part in Lanark County?
- Taming of the Beckwith Shrew?
- A Smith’s Falls “Frustrated Young Love’s Dream”
- Purdy vs LenahanGoing to the Chapel?
- Hold on– Not so Fast!
- Another Episode in Spinsterdom–The Armour Sisters of Perth
- She Came Back! A Ghost Divorce Story
- Slander You Say in Hopetown? Divorce in Rosetta?
- Go Ask Alice – The Saga of a Personal Ad Divorce
- Bigamy–The Story of Ken and Anne and Debby and Cathy and…