"MARRYIN’ POLLY"

Transcribed from the Evansville Courier, Friday, 16 July 1909



Boonville, Ind., July 15 – Polly Weed Baker Shippert, married ten times, may have a chance to marry the eleventh time. Today acting through her attorney, A.J. Ruttledge of Newburg, she filed a suit for divorce against her husband Simon Shippert, to whom she was married in Evansville on March 29 last by Magistrate Eben C. Poole. They separated on July 3.



Mrs. Shippert is 70 years old and says in her complaint that Simon treated her in a cruel and inhuman manner making her do all the drudgery while he sat around smoking and chewing and making her home unpleasant. She also says she is afraid he will do her some bodily harm and asks for the full possession of her property which was hers before her marriage to Shippert.



Mrs. Shippert has probably been married more times and had more husbands than any other woman in America. A majority of her former husbands were divorced. A few days after her recent marriage, one of her friends asked her if she thought it would be her last marriage and to this question she is said to have replied: “I do not know. If I should lose Mr. Shippert I might try again. I live married life.”



The divorce case will be tried before Judge Roscoe Kiper of the Warrick County circuit court some time next term. If Mrs. Shippert is given her divorce, she will retired to Newburg where she has a home and is comfortably fixed.



The fact that the last matrimonial venture of Mrs. Shippert was a failure was a surprise to many of her friends at Newburg. On Decoration Day in May she and her husband went arm and arm together to the cemetery at Newburg, where she decorated the graves of her former husbands who are buried there. Mr. Shippert carried the large basket that contained the flowers while the aged woman did the work of decorating the graves. She is said to have remarked at the time while she loved all her former husbands at one time, she believed she thought a little more of Mr. Shippert than any of the rest.



Shippert’s former home was in Burlington, Iowa, where he was engaged in the insurance business. It is probable he will return to the Iowa town where he will try to forget his marital troubles



While Mrs. Shippert has been married ten times she has had but nine husbands as she married one husband the second time, having obtained a divorce from him and afterwards consenting to be his wife again.

- Submitted by Brenda Joyce Jerome, CG