Married at sixteen and widowed at twenty-three, Sarah Ellen Hall lost her first husband, George W. Fenton, when he was accidentally shot by her elder brother.

Her second marriage, to John Hoffman, commenced three years later and lasted eighteen years before she filed for divorce, the proceedings of which cited her husband’s drunkenness and death threats towards her, as well as an alarming incident during which he pursued her with a butcher knife.

Her third marriage, to elderly widower and Civil War veteran Isaac Newton Holman, received much attention in the local newspapers which delighted in the story of the couple’s chance meeting at a land office. However, this marriage lasted only five years before Isaac filed for divorce, a contentious event that also made the news:

“[…] He owned property worth $25,000, and he asserts his wife has wasted $10,000 of that. Part of this went as costly presents to her children by a former marriage, while Mr. Holman’s children were denied even access to his home, it is alleged. […] About April, 1909, she began what appeared to be a systematic effort to drive her husband from home, he avers. She snatched the bedclothes from his couch at night, blew out the light when he wished to read, and invited him often to leave. She sought a lawyer on the subject of divorce, and was told she had no ground for action […]”

The Decatur Herald, Decatur, Nebraska, 28 August 1913

Sarah contested the divorce, but it was finalized nevertheless, and not quite four years later she embarked on her fourth and final attempt to secure a life partner. This marriage, to Swedish immigrant Nels Peter Eklof, lasted just two years. The Sioux City Journal reported:

CUPID FAILS FOURTH TIME.

Husband Tantalized Her When She Was Ill, Wife Says.

Her fourth attempt to obtain matrimonial bliss by the marriage route having proved unsuccessful, Sarah E. Eklof, 61 years old, yesterday was granted a divorce from N. P. Eklof in the district court and permitted to use her maiden name of Sarah E. Holman.

Mrs. Eklof charged her husband with cruel and inhuman treatment. She embarked on her fourth marriage with Mr. Eklof in March [May], 1917, but because of his treatment was compelled to leave him a year later, she asserted in her petition. Eklof is of Swedish descent and is 58 years old.

In addition to using harsh language toward her, Mrs. Eklof charged her husband with denying her the privilege of having a fire in the house and compelled her to use candles for light when the house was equipped with electric lights.

A deposition of testimony by Berletta Cunningham of Oregon [Ogden] City, Utah, was introduced in court. She testified that Mr. Eklof mimicked his wife’s coughing when she was ill and that he failed to provide medical attention for her.

The Sioux City Journal, Sioux City, Iowa, 01 June 1919

It is unknown how Sarah and Nels Peter Eklof would have crossed paths. Nels had spent many years farming with his wife and son in Idaho, and after the death of his wife in 1915, he relocated to Ogden, Utah. Newspaper clippings indicate that he spent the winter of 1916-1917 in Long Beach, California, and that in April 1917, he left Ogden by train bound for Lakeview, Oregon. Somehow, however, Nels found himself in Sioux City, Iowa, where, mere weeks later, on 26 May 1917, he married Sarah Ellen Hall.

Sarah was sixty and Nels fifty-six at the time of their marriage, and it does not seem outside the realm of possibility that, considering he had been recently widowed, Nels might have posted a personal advertisement seeking a wife to make a home with him in the west. Could Sarah have been a mail-order bride? Whatever the case, Sarah accompanied Nels to Utah, where in September of 1917 and March of 1918 they were engaged in real estate transactions in Ogden, but it seems it was not long before their relationship soured. By the time Sarah’s son registered for the draft in September of 1918, at which time he named his mother as his nearest relative and provided her home address, she had apparently returned to Sioux City.

Oddly enough, once her divorce to Nels Peter Elkof was finalized, Sarah reverted to the use of the surname Holman—that of her third husband, with whom she had been engaged in a contentious divorce only six years before! One would think she would have wanted no further association with Isaac Newton Holman, particularly when considering that the publicity their divorce received must have caused her great embarrassment. However, further research indicates that there may have been more behind the failure of that marriage than was initially reported in the newspapers.

Just a month after the first details of their divorce proceedings were printed, The Decatur Herald posted a notice that an adult son of Isaac Newton Holman sought to obtain guardianship: “The son alleges that the old man is incompetent by reason of his advanced age to attend to his business affairs and that he is squandering his fortune.” Probate case files provide more detail, again from the perspective of Holman’s son, who stated “[…] that the said Isaac N. Holman has been a user of intoxicating liquors to excess for a number of years during his lifetime; that his home life during later years has been unhappy; that the amount of money demanded from him by his present wife annoyed him considerable.” It was added that “said Isaac N. Holman has become changeable, forgetful and stubborn,” and that he was “easily influenced and brought into expensive litigation.”

This, of course, raises questions: Did this son have valid concerns that his father might reconcile with Sarah, allowing her further financial influence, or was his father actually senile, and, perhaps, an alcoholic as well—and might his mental state and habits have contributed to the downfall of his marriage? The court ruled in the favor of Holman’s son, granting him guardianship, and it is unknown is whether Sarah and her ex-husband ever had any further contact with one another.

In the years to come, Sarah would continue to present herself as the wife or widow of Isaac Newton Holman, who died in 1922, and “Sarah E. Holman” was the name inscribed on her gravestone upon her death in 1930. Perhaps her desire to hold on to the Holman surname was her attempt at erasing what she may have considered to be a mistake—her final brief, unhappy marriage in Utah—when it was simpler to present herself as the widow of a man who had some local prominence as a well-to-do landowner. The five years during which she was married to Isaac Newton Holman may well have been the only period of time during which she had enjoyed a higher social status and relative affluence in a life otherwise riddled with hardship.

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