Eloping Pair Are Wed Deep in Waving Corn

1916

Doctor Outwits Farmer's Wife in Race to Win Bride — All Ends Happily.

WILMINGTON, Delaware. — Maud Muller on a summer day never looked lovelier than Margaret Beattie, a farmer's daughter of Hockessin, when she stood a bride in the middle of a waving cornfield.

The bridegroom was Dr. Alvin Rupert, of New Rochelle, N. Y. It was a runaway match — so much so that the bride played her stately part in the fetching simplicity of a sunbonnet and a gingham frock.

A difference in religious beliefs had caused her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Beattie, of "Fernside," to forbid her marriage to Dr. Rupert on August 17, as the young people had arranged.

But the enamored doctor was not to be denied. Accompanied by his parents, Mr. and Mrs. John Rupert, he established quarters on a neighboring farm, that of William Crossan.

Communication had been forbidden, but the sighing pair discovered a hollow tree of the type traditionally favored by Cupid as a lover's postoffice, and thus in scribbled words they exchanged their hopes and plans.

Dr. Rupert came to Wilmington, procured a marriage license and a clergyman and motored with them back to Hockessin. Margaret Beattie met them at a turn in the road, having slipped away from her father's farm in her everyday clothes.

Fearful of pursuit, the wedding party hastily penetrated the sheltered expanse of a cornfield. It was as much as the minister could do, however, to get thru the service quickly enough to outspeed the bride's vigilant mamma, who had followed Margaret and arrived breathless just after the ring had been slipped on her finger.

Faced with the inevitable, the Beatties decided to forgive their daughter and her Lochinvar, and the happy pair went South for their honeymoon.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Sept. 16, 1916, p. 5.