Note 16 — 6

There is no record of this marriage in the clerk's office; where it was regarded, of course, as a joke. This was probably a unique case of a secret marriage made in public; but there is no doubt as to its validity. The editor remembers the Blivens as respected citizens. They are dead long since, and left no descendants. Otherwise the historian would not have told their story--which is not illustrative of anything usual in our early history; but shows that in Iowa as in other new countries there were those who were escaping from their past.--G.v.d.M.