Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 188, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 August 1915 — COULDN’T SWEAR TO A LIE [ARTICLE]

COULDN’T SWEAR TO A LIE

So Indiana Woman Was Unable to Get a License to Get Married. Columbus, Ind. —“I’ll not swear to a lie,” declared Mrs. Bertha M. Blume, who lives a short distance north of here, when her daughter, Miss lona R. Blume, begged her to sign an affidavit that she (the girl) was old enough to get married. Mrs. Blume, her daughter, and Thomas V. Hobbs, a farmer, had gone to the county clerk’s office to obtain a marriage license. The girl appeared to be young and L. J. Cox, county clerk, asked her age. She replied that she. was over sixteen. “The law is pretty strict about such matters as this,” the clerk said, “and I will just write odt a blank affidavit here for Mrs. Blume to sign, showing that you are sixteen years old.” “I’m not going to swear to a He about her age,” the mother declared. "Please go on and sign it,” the girl begged. But the mother would not do it. The girl was sobbing when she left the clerk’s office after a license was refused.