A White-Haired Husband's Thousand-Mile Hunt for the Wife Who Vanished
Since his wife eloped with another man last August, J. B. Small has crisscrossed the country and now reaches Seattle with nothing but a clue and a broken heart.
SEATTLE, Wash., Nov. 30.—In an erring search for his erring wife, who eloped last August with Frank Small of Oswego, Ore., J. B. Small has traveled thousands of miles and is now in Seattle hoping to obtain some clue to the whereabouts of the woman. In spite of her perfidy his wife left him, and Small's hair and beard have grown white with worry and grief. He says he is afraid she is in destitute circumstances somewhere, as the man with whom she eloped is a villain of the darkest dye, and would not hesitate to wrong her. They met and talked with her a little, and she implored his pardon and promised to return to him, but in some way eluded him and returned once more to the other. Then Small surrendered his business interests and is following every clue which might enable him to find her. He is a French Canadian whose veins contain Indian blood. He has traveled far and was in the Arizona country.
“Small's hair and beard have grown white with worry and grief.”
A jilted spouse who gives up his livelihood to chase a vanished partner across state lines is a story we still recognize — today it would unfold across social media and missing-person forums rather than telegrams. What the era framed as 'an erring wife' was, for Small, simply a grief he could not put down. The impulse to keep searching, long after hope has thinned, is unchanged.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.