NINE TIMES MARRIED.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11646, 25 August 1905, Page 2

NINE TIMES MARRIED.

Woman's Strantf« Ufa.

v LOUISVILLE, June 24k The prettiest woman-in. Taylor-County is Mrs Ayres,. whxv.although'but 33,yea?s ol'd^has been' married nine" times -/J»jd never oeen divorced;' Her-'lunth-marrijyji* took place a few days ago. Her "full nanfe is Matilda Jane Harkihs ' Ellet .i-Bojipi Wyckton Lowman Lowman Hudson, DUmenil Ayres. The -new -mate's -naTne.-js Mason Ayres; and if M^ou Ayres.shottld happen- to go to .join' the: colony *• of 'hatbands on the mountainside . ,tw to"t o" mufes south-west .of Lone Star, there- would-be others pleading for the'opportunity'to*be No. 10. ■ - • :•.-, Up above the Washfoot Baptist Church, in the hills near Lone Star, is the gfifeyard; and the row of stones, side by aide, bear inscriptions that tell briefly the stoty of Mattie Ayres and her wedded'life.- -^J Tor she has buried the eight husbatfds side by'side, with graves just alike,'with the head and tombstones in exact duplicate. ' .fiThe girl's romance commenced .when:#h« was fifteen years old and eloped and married Morg EUet. She saw Morg. Elletff it Campbellsville one night when he plajed a solo with the Silver Cornet Band, add her heart was won. Eleven months. atfc«r the elopement Morg went, hunting. While he was sitting on a fence his rifle slipped, the hammer struck the rail, and the bullet pierced his brain. Mattie EUet remained a widow ten months, then, her heart wa« won by Stephen Boards', 'who was' •lderly, kindly, and wealthy, owner of a l*rjtefarm and much timber land. Everybody said she had married him for his money, and hated him accordingly. One day., within seven weeks of the wedding, "" M Boards was riding back toward Canipbellßville, after foreclosing a mortgage, he was shot from ambush and killed,' and Mattie Ellet Boards became a wealthy wido#. Again a swarm of wooers came round. But not one of them gained any advantage until Ed. Wyckton came from about Gadberry, in Adair County, where he hid been operating an .illicit" still. - '•- One day, after they had been married eight months, tKe revenue officers- made, 1 * raid,- and in the'battle which followed Mattie saw her husband throw' up his hands, reel in a circle, and drop dead with a bullet in his brain.- - - •£>.! Widowed three times in as many years, Mattie Harkins went back to live at honte, near Lone Star, building a pretty home on the site of the rude house from wnifih she eloped as a schoolgirl. Two years later she married Nat .Lowman, who hjid been one of her girlhood lovers. Nat lived just two years, then died of consumption. She buried him alongside the others and. mourned for nine months, then became-ih'e bride of' Andy Lowman, Nat's brother^Thajr lived happily for four' year's and one child —Matties first —came to bless the union. Then a' tree fell the wrong direction. 1 as Andy was chopping it down. But eleven months after her fifth/bereavement Manual Hudson came by chance to the home. •. ' •"' .\ - There was no handsomer .man-in all, tut Kentucky hills, and he had been aw»y . fo college* and was the "singingeat" and "guitar pickingest"- swain round tKe county. He won Matties" love by his kindness to her little girl baby, and six months after they met they were.marriedi' -Hudson was shot in a'row at Frankfort the next year while lobbying in the Legislature for a Timber and Land Bill, and one year later his widow was led to the altar by Pony Dumenil, a man.\ixom- the "blue" grass, "who m«ft -her at ;B lrankfojft when, as Mrs Hudson, she attended.a session of the Legislature. - Dumenil took her to live at* Harrodsburg, 'but that same fall he was stricken with heart disease and fell dead in the.lobby of the Gibson House in Cincinnati. h ".--'. This did not stop the flocking of bachelors and widowers toward Lone Star;; and the unmarried girls made complaint <-th«t the handsome multi-widqw^was. stealing wl "the valuable men.. Mas«m, Ayres, a youiig sawmiller, wasi'^the. ninth man;to;win her heart, and, although'they*-have been married for nearly two .weeks he still remain* happy and hearty, and Mattie Ayres* "waiting list" is beginning to get " discouraged. '

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