|
Louis Noe and Eva FickeisenTheir Marriage
The log cabin where they lived in Wood County, WV had a ladder for stairs, no floor. The log cabin was not even sealed. According to mom, Eva was shocked when they arrived at the farm, because she had been lead to believe things were a bit better. Eva set her bags down and made him agree to build the floor and add rooms, or she would turn around and go back to Pleasant Ridge. They had to chink up the logs before the winter. They papered one room with wallpaper, the other rooms with newspaper. They put in a grape arbor the next summer, got chickens, cow and horses. Mom says he was so mean she had to hitch the horses. Eva later supposedly told mom, "If they'd have had such a thing as divorce in those days, when I saw that shack he called a house, I'd have got one."
Earlier, when I was trying to find out when Ludwig and Eve were married, it looked for a time as though the twins were born out of wedlock. I gently suggested this to my mother, and she told me this story: "People tried to say that Ella was born out of wedlock. But I just went and got the marriage certificate, which mom [my grandmother] had with her jewelry. I gave it to Aunt Ella, and she said 'That makes me feel good, Lorene.'" According to my mother, it was Carolina "Dammie" Noe Fickeisen who tried to spread this and other vicious rumors about Eve. When Dammie was on her death bed, she asked for Eve's forgiveness through Ella. Eve said she forgave her, but she didn't want anything to do with her "after the terrible things she did to me." |