OCONEE COUNTY, SOUTH CAROLINA - News - After Thirty Years February 21, 1888 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/sc/scfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in SCGenWeb Archives by: Linda Blum-Barton lab56@bellsouth.net March 27, 2006 The Weekly Constitution, Atlanta, Ga. February 21, 1888 The Romance in the Lives of Two Persons. Re-United After Long Years of Suffering, Suspense and Vicissitude -- A Happy Couple. Clayton, Ga., February 18. -- Your correspondent has recently had the pleasure of interviewing a Mr. James H. Whiten, who has just returned from a thirty years' stay in the wild west. His experience in frontier life, which is full of Indian skirmishes, bear hunts, etc., is quite interesting; but the separation from his wife for a period of thirty years, and what led to their meeting, is the most interesting feature of his story. In January, 1857, Mr. Whiten was married to Miss Nancy Fowler, a beautiful young lady who resided near Westminster, South Carolina. Young Whiten was very ambitious to prepare for his wife a commodious home, both being very poor at the time of their marriage. He made up his mind to try his fortune in the west. The gold fever was spreading thorugh this country at that time like a contagion, and Pike's Peak was the objective point. So in the following spring, when winter's winds had given place to the breezes of spring, and before the honeymoon had fairly waned, vows of everylasting devotion and fidelity were exchanged and Mr. Whiten turned his face westward. After roughing it five years among desperadoes and Indians, and having gathered considerable money, he decided to return to his Nancy; but not so to be. The civil war was then in full blast, and, while passing through the state of Texas, Mr. Whiten was called on for his services and had to respond. During his term many letters were written to the precious one, but no answer ever came. Through an acquaintance he was informed that his wife had refugeed to parts unknown. In the soldiers' camp, in the state of Kansas, the news of Lee's surrender reached him. Being destitute of means on which to travel, and having learned thorugh an effort to establish a communication that the one was dead for whom it was his pleasure to live, he returned to Colorado, there to spend the balance of his days in the solitude of the west. For twenty-two years, said Mr. Whiten, "I wandered over the plains and prairies, my thoughts ever carrying me back to the place where I kissed her goodbye." It seems that his grief, instead of relaxing, grew more poignant. In the fall of 1887 he met an old friend, Joe Steel, in Montana. Mr. Steel told him that it was very likely that his wife was still living; that he had a faint recollection of a marriage in an adjoining county of a Mr. Southern to a Mrs. Whiten, who had long since given up her former husband for dead, and that Southern was dead, so he was informed, and that the widow's postoffice was Fort Madison, S. C. Elated by these glad tidings, Mr. Whiten directed three letters to Fort Madison, one to Mrs. Southern, one to Mrs. Whiten and one to Mr. -- Whiten, a supposed son of his. Eagerly did he wait for a reply, but none came. The letters remained int he office till one day the postmaster at that place was fixing to make a legal disposition of them, when a countryman, Mr. John Latham, chanced to step in. The postmaster casually asked Latham if he knew any one by the name of Nancy Southern or Nancy Whiten. Latham happened to be well acquainted with the widow, and, by request of the postmaster, carried the letters to Mrs. Southern. She answered him at once, explaining her second marriage: that she heard he was dead, and expressed great anxiety to see him. Mr. W. at once took the train for Westminster, S. C., having been, by her letter, informed that she lived at the same old place. Arriving at Westminster, he proceeded to the old country homestead, where the parting took place. There under the willow tree in the yard, where they parted thirty years before, they met again. Time and trouble had, of course, left its impress upon both. Said Mr. Whiten: "Though the black curls she once wore were streaked with gray, and the sparkling eve was dimmed, and the tint of the rose had left the cheek, yet she was as dear to me as ever. We are now living together as happily as when we parted in the spring of 1857. My son came to see me at Christmas -- the first time I ever saw him -- and we all had a jolly time!"