(Not my) Treasure Chest Thursday - "The Bride's Book" for Betty and Charles, Part II

Last week I wrote about a bride's book that I found at a local antique store and my quest to return it to it's rightful owner. The book belonged to Betty, a young bride from California, and included all the memories from her wedding in 1953. Included in the antique store find was Betty's teenage dream scrapbook with content ranging from magazine clippings of her dream of a future life of marital bliss to various scraps from her teen years. These two books enthralled me. They symbolized what many young girls of the 1950s hoped their lives would become: June Cleaver in a Leave-it-to-Beaver world.

One of Betty's "dream kitchens."

Yet, my initial forays in finding Betty and her new husband, Charles, came up empty. Then on a re-attack I came across some distressing news. Betty and Charles were divorced, 21 years after they married. Both of them remarried within a couple of years of the divorce, but apparently those marriages went south as well, as Betty divorced her second husband after only two months and Charles divorced after only a year or so. I now understood why she got rid of her scrapbooks...too many memories she wanted to forget. Life had not panned out like she had dreamed it would.

Just as I was chalking up the Betty and Charles story as another sad but frequent story of love gone wrong, I happened to look at the California Marriage Index entry for Betty. She was listed twice, once with Charles and once with her second husband. I had not thought twice about this because it was a fact. But this particular index lists California marriages from 1960-1985...Betty and Charles were married in 1953. I scanned for the date and there it was:

Charles and Betty's marriage...their second one. On their 25th anniversary, no less. I was ecstatic to find this. I have no idea what happened to Betty and Charles, but I don't care. I'm going to stop researching and live with my own dream...that the young girl finally found her happily ever after.

(Not my) Treasure Chest Thursday - "The Bride's Book" for Betty and Charles

I have always thought of myself as an old soul and I think my love of genealogy, quilting and 40s music (among many other examples) justifies that. I also love to troll through antique stores. I'm always on the lookout for genealogy related items, even if they don't belong to any of my lines. I'm not sure why I keep my eyes open for things like old photos, memory books, bibles, etc. Perhaps it is because I have always felt that objects sometimes have a life of their own...or at least maintain a little bit of their owner's personality.

About a year ago, we were walking through our favorite antique store and I came across this:

That description alone was enough for any genealogist to go a little crazy. I'm not even sure why I was attracted to this package...I have no connections whatsoever with California and I surely didn't know Betty. But I felt drawn to it. I even walked away but came back and bought it anyway. I couldn't understand why a family would get rid of this...such happy memories! I was certain that I could reunite Betty, or her family, with this memorabilia. As soon as I got home I opened the package which included a teenage girl's scrapbook from the late 1940s and early 1950s and a wedding memory book. I started searching my find by flipping through "The Bride's Book." It was for the wedding of Betty and Charles on February 14, 1953. There was a list of all the wedding guests, all of the wedding presents and when Betty sent the thank you notes, and a copy of the wedding announcement from the Los Angeles Times. There was also a brief family tree. I instantly hit the computer to try to track down Betty. I could find nothing. No newspaper articles, no SSDI (thank goodness), nothing to tell me what happened to the happy couple.

As is usually the case, I tried for a bit to find Betty and Charles but then I put their memories on my book shelf and moved on to more pressing cases. Today I pulled the scrapbooks down again with the intent to find Betty or get rid of the scrapbooks. I flipped through "The Bride's Book" again and came across their wedding vows. And this wedding poem, written by a friend of Betty's named Ada:

The other scrapbook contained photos of a 1950s girl's dream of married life: cutouts from magazines of happy husbands, giggling babies, tasty recipes and images of the ideal kitchen. It also included wedding announcements for Betty's friends. Betty and her friends had created an ideal for married life. I had to find out what happened to these dreamers; did their dream become a reality?

Many records had been added to the Ancestry databases since my first search and I was able to find a record of Betty and Charles' wedding in 1953. I also found the following:

A divorce record. Betty and Charles made it 21 years before they divorced. I have no idea if they had children or not, I have not found any more records of the couple. A girl's dream? I doubt it. I have never met a girl that had a dream of divorcing. The end of a happy story. Or is it?