The traditional shotgun wedding, replete
with gun-toting relatives, is a common premise of comedies set in hillbilly
country. Any big-city fellers who wander into such areas had best be discreet
about interacting with local womenfolk, lest they find themselves forced—at the
point of a gun—to stay a lot longer than they had intended.
But what if the shotgun-armed relatives show
up after the wedding? And the news of the family bruhaha is transmitted to
newspapers halfway around the globe?
Sarah Wafer was born into a large and
well-known family with extensive land holdings in southeast Claiborne Parish.
At sixteen, she was attending school in Terryville, also known as Quay, then in
Claiborne but later annexed as part of Lincoln Parish.
In the fall of 1855, a Dr. Clement and 16-year-old
Sarah, “an orphan heiress of a wealthy Louisiana planter,” eloped from
Claiborne Parish. The couple journeyed to Arkansas “with utmost dispatch” where
a quick marriage ceremony was performed.
The account of what happened next was
detailed in Homer’s Claiborne Advocate.
On the return trip to Claiborne Parish, Dr.
and Mrs. Clement were met by the bride’s brother, James T. Wafer, who forcibly
took possession of his sister. Mabry Wafer, Sarah’s father, had died two years
earlier, so James had become Sarah’s guardian. Dr. Clement was removed from his
seat beside his tearful bride. After some discussion, the groom was allowed to
accompany his wife to Wafer’s home.
After a short time, Wafer permitted the
couple to leave. The newlyweds went to the doctor’s house in Arcadia. There
they resided “in the comfortable enjoyment of about one half of their
honeymoon” when Sarah was summoned to the bedside of a sick sister at her
brother’s residence.
Apparently, the summons was a ruse to
separate Sarah from Clement. While at James’s home, Sarah was presented with a
letter written by her brother-in-law, the sister’s husband. The letter accused
Dr. Clement of “having basely imposed upon and deceived her and that he was a
coward for allowing himself to be chastised by her brother. Even worse, the
letter said Clement was “old, ugly, and no physician,” that Sarah did not love
him and never did, and that she could never consent again to live with him.
Sarah signed the letter.
The Wafers loaded Sarah in a wagon and
carried her to the home of another sister, Mary, who lived with her husband
John Wyatt Simmons on the Red River in Bossier Parish.
Dr. Clement followed in pursuit with fifteen
to eighteen armed Arcadia friends. Reaching the Red River home, they demanded
Sarah Clement. To avert bloodshed, Sarah consented to go with Clement but only
on the condition she be taken to her uncle, Claiborne Parish resident Reverend
James T. Wafer. The parties agreed Sarah would remain unmolested at Rev.
Wafer’s for two days. Then she would announce her decision on returning to
Arcadia with Clement.
Skeptical the agreement would hold, brother James
Wafer raised a group of armed men to accompany him to his uncle’s to retrieve
his sister. The house was heavily guarded, however, and the sound of the
cocking of several shotguns by Clement and his friends caused the party to
retreat.
James went to Homer to swear out a
complaint. Claiborne Deputy Sheriff Gentry Warren summoned a posse of about
twenty armed men to go with him in the middle of the night to Rev. Wafer’s house
in the Arizona community to arrest Dr. Clement and his party for “forcible
abduction and imprisonment of the fair heroine.”
Warren and the posse narrowly escaped meeting
gunfire when they approached the house. Had they not quickly announced
themselves as the law, a bloody fight would have ensued. Instead, Clement and
his friends submitted to arrest.
The entire party arrived at Homer about 9:00
a.m. the next morning—the posse riding in carrying their shotguns intermingled
with the prisoners and Clement and Sarah seated side by side in a buggy.
In the commotion of sixty riders on the
street, one of the posse members accidentally discharged his shotgun. The
charge passed through the window of J. M. Thomason’s office, inflicting a nasty
but survivable wound on the Homer attorney.
James Wafer signed an affidavit for a writ
of habeas corpus, which was issued by District Court Judge Harmon A.
Drew. The writ commanded Clement to produce Sarah and show cause why he
deprived her of her rights and liberties. Clement did not answer the writ
immediately and was also arrested for contempt of court. The next day, Drew held
the habeas corpus and contempt hearings and dismissed both.
Two days later, those arrested for the
alleged abduction and imprisonment of Mrs. Clement appeared before Justice
_________ Millican. Clement was tried first. One of the witnesses was Mary
Wafer Simmons, Sarah’s older sister. Mary testified Sarah had been engaged to
her brother-in-law, Sidney Simmons, before her elopement with Dr. Clement. Mary
said Sarah had received a letter purporting to be from Sidney in which he chastised
her for her dalliances and was finished with her. Based on the letter, Sarah,
or Sallie as Mary called her, hastened into an elopement with Clement, who she
did not love, and after the marriage, learned to hate.
The letter was a forgery.
The case against Clement was dismissed and
the prosecution declined to pursue Clement’s “accomplices.”
While the trials were underway, Sarah was
“spirited away to parts unknown.” The Claiborne Advocate reported, “the
general opinion is that she has been transported to Arkansas, where she is
protected or guarded by forty double barreled shotguns and a howitzer!”
Adding insult to injury for the parties
involved, the article from the Advocate was published across the
country, including papers in Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Vermont, New York, North
Carolina, and even in England and Scotland.
Surely the saga does not end there, but the
newspapers are silent on the rest of Sarah Wafer’s life. Family genealogy
records are confusing, but census records and other government documents seem
to sort out her fate.
Mary died soon after the trial and Sarah
married the widower, her brother-in-law John Wyatt Simmons. What happened to beau
Sidney and husband Dr. Clement so far has eluded us.
Sarah and John Simmons moved to Texas where
they farmed and ranched in Rains County near other members of the Wafer clan.
They raised numerous children, including one named Mabry after her father.
While Sarah’s love life got off to a rocky
start, she finally found a relationship that worked, experiencing a marriage of
at least 40 years. Sarah died in 1905 and John followed in 1917.