ALTON - Bernice and Clarence Geisler of the Nutwood Drainage District in Jersey County had been married for about a year when a horse trade gone bad tore them apart. Their fathers, Henry Geisler and Charles Ontis, decided to swap horses. For a time, everything was fine, but then Henry Geisler decided that his new horse was balky.
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Ontis refused to trade back, and responded that Geisler had waited nearly three months to complain, and that while Geisler had the horse it was maimed by barbed wire and injured. Geisler employed attorney R.C. Chappel of Jerseyville to bring suit to retrieve his horse and Ontis retained Attorney Martin J. Dolan to defend his side. Jersey County Sheriff Frank Sowell spent an entire week interviewing witnesses, and subpoenaed 20 of them. Bernice and Clarence Geisler had been living with his parents, but when the dispute over the horse trade became heated, Bernice packed her clothes, left her husband, and went home to her parents’ house where she could demonstrate allegiance to her father. The suit was filed in Jersey County Court, and an August 27, 1924, newspaper article claimed that it would come up before County Judge Harry L. Chapman in December 1924.
The fate of the horse trade suit could not be easily found, but the fate of the marriage between Bernice Ontis Geisler and Clarence Geisler was very clear. They did not reconcile. Bernice married Eldon Vaughn in 1928. She died in 1989 at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Alton. Clarence moved to Jacksonville and married Gertrude Louise Weber in 1969. He died there in 1973.
The Alton Evening Telegraph described the whole situation as “much like that described in the book, David Harum.” The book, written by Edward Noyes Westcott and published in 1898, was turned into a Broadway play in 1900, a silent film in 1915, and a Will Rodgers comedy in 1934. A David Harum is also a kind of ice cream sundae named for the character in the book. It consists of vanilla ice cream, crushed strawberry, crushed pineapple, whipped cream, and a cherry.
Sources
“Bernice Vaughn.” Alton Evening Telegraph (Alton, IL), January 13, 1989.
Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library. "W. H. Crane in "David Harum" " New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed August 20, 2024.https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/a2652287-b009-c4d1-e040-e00a18062614
“Grand Jury Returns Five True Bills Wednesday.” Alton Evening Telegraph (Alton, IL), September 27, 1924.
“Horse Trade Threatens to Disrupt Family Ties.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch (St. Louis, MO), August 25, 1924.
“Horse Trader Taken to County Court.” Alton Evening Telegraph (Alton, IL), August 27, 1924.
“Ontis – Vaughn.” Alton Evening Telegraph (Alton, IL), August 11, 1928.
Turback, Michael. 2009. Ice Cream Sundae : 100 Greatest Fountain Formulas. [United States?]: Restaurant Museum.
?Westcott, Edward Noyes. 1898. David Harum : A Story of American Life. New York: D. Appleton and Company.
“Young Couple Separates Over Farthers’ [sic] Horse Trade.” Alton Evening Telegraph (Alton, IL), August 25, 1924.
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