"Pour libation for your father and mother who rest in the valley of the departed. God will witness your action and accept it. Do not forget this even when you are away from home. For as you do for your parents, your children will do likewise for you." ~~ Egyptian Book of Coming Forth by Day

Sunday, March 09, 2014

Cross-dressing Granny


An August 9, 1922 Joplin Globe article left me wondering about the lives of my great-grandparents, George and Anna Coker. The headline read Spying on Husband Leads to Her Arrest. Anna was detained after residents reported that a man was wandering around the neighborhood. The arresting officer did not realize she was a woman until they spoke as he was escorting her to the police station.


It's hard to imagine prim and proper Anna dressed in men's clothes skulking about in search of my great-grandfather. I don't know what was going on with them after forty something years of marriage but there was another article in December of that year about George being convicted of wife abandonment and having to pay a $300 fine. Wow, that's a lot of money in 1922. They either worked things out or George realized it was cheaper to keep her. They remained together until he died in 1931.

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