Hoosier Democrat, Flora, Ind, Sat 9 Mar 1912 March 13, 1912
MR AND MRS. M. V. KIRKPATRICK TO OBSERVE 50 YEARS OF MARRIED LIFE
On next Wednesday, Mr and Mrs. Martin V. KIRKPATRICK of Carrollton township will renew the nuptial vows which were plighted a half century ago. Invitations have been issued to friends of long ago as well as to a few of those recently acquired, and more than a hundred guests will probably help in this golden anniversary celebration, among whom will be several who witnessed the ceremony fifty years ago. Those will be James BANTA of Lafayette; Samuel BANTA of Indianapolis; John BANTA of Loganposrt; Edward STEPHENS, Mrs. Margaret WINEGARDNER and Robert KIRKPATRICK of the old neighborhood.
Fifty years ago on a bleak March day at the home of the bride's parents, near the county line of Cass and Carroll county, Miss Nancy BANTA and Martin V. KIRKPATRICK were made man and wife by the Rev. Samuel MITCHELL, now dead. That day Mart promised to love, honor and protect the fair young lady whom he had acknowledged before the world and high heaven as his lawful wife, and he has kept the vow sacredly for fifty years, and there is not even a remote possibility that other conditions will arise in the few remaining years to change the ardent love of half a century, not to make honor and protection an idle boast. The promise of that fair maiden, who elected to cleave until this farmer boy and forsake all others, had been faithfully followed and now, today, that love which finds its greatest triumph in the happy union of human hearts, answers back a haughty defiance to those who plead that marriage is a failure and virtue a lie. There is an unanswerable argument in the lives of such as these.
Fifty years! the time seems almost too long to measure by a childish mind but it is only a short voyage to those who are "looking backward." This couple went to "Keepin' house" on the farm six miles easy of Flora, which has ever since been their home. Axminsters, chiffoniers and davenports were unknown in the Carrollton township homes of that day. The well scrubbed floor, the little home-made pot cupboard and the split-bottom hickory chairs were the furnishings that the young wife of that day was proud of. The piano whose ivory keys are touched gently and sweetly by the tapering white fingers of the modern housewife would have been entirely out of place in the little home, with no high born companions. The spinning wheel, the dasher churn, and an occasional turn at the soap kettle furnished healthy recreation then. the seven hundred clubs and other society functions of today had their prototype in the old fashioned cradle and the mother's sweet lullaby that made the evening hours happier grander, and more glorious. All of the card parties and dress affairs of this generation will not add as much to the purity of the American home as the echo of just one lullaby song of long ago.
Mr and Mrs. KIRKPATRICK will have with them next Wednesday all of their children, which have blest these fifty years of their life. They are: Lon and Oliver of Delphi; Mrs. Jennie CARNELL of Logansport; Mrs. Allen TUCKER of Kokomo; Mrs. Harry HUBBLER of Galveston, and Burt of Carrollton township.
The dinner which will be served will be a four-course one and the dining room as well as the table will be decorated in yellow and white. In fact the colors will be worked out in the entire program.
Mr and Mrs. KIRKPATRICK are among Carroll county's grandest old people and their many friends will wish them many more years of the happiness that has been theirs in the past.
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