What is the longest discontinuous marriage?

Submitted ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨SkipWapPallyPap@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨nostupidquestions@lemmy.world⁩

I’m thinking along the lines of older spouse dies, younger spouse marries someone younger and becomes the older spouse. Then older spouse dies again and repeat. Has anything like this happened in a long enough chain to be significant? Is it so mundane no one cares?

source

Comments

Sort:hotnew top

neidu2@feddit.nl ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
That’s a really interesting question, but I’m having a hard time seeing how one can look this up without direct access to an SQL database of all married people. Can we pay off some government sysadmin?

source
- SkipWapPallyPap@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I’m in!
  
  source
- BarbecueCowboy@kbin.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  The data is mostly already there and publicly maintained. Ancestry/familysearch/etc should get us something interesting at least, data is a little bit light outside the us but someone would just need to go through it.
  
  source
  - neidu2@feddit.nl ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    This sounds like a job for a weird spaghetti code contraption consisting of selenium, perl, DBI, postgres, and shitloads of caffeine. I’ll give it a look tomorrow, hoping that the captcha I assume is there can be circumvented or automated one way or another.
    
    I’m not really interested in the people, as I’m not from the US and am unlikely to be related to any of them. I’m just curious about the dataset itself, especially in relation to OPs question.
    
    source
    -> View More Comments
- Blizzard@lemmy.zip ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Now I’m even more interested to see the SQL query.
  
  source
Alto@kbin.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Not at all an answer to your question, but a very semi-related tangent.

The last receipt of a US Civil War pension passed away relatively recently. She was a young woman who would regularly help out a local older man, a civil war vet with no kids or family otherwise. Towards the end of his days, he married her so she'd get the benefits of his pension, as things were really really tough.

source
- idiomaddict@feddit.de ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It sounds like you’re thinking of Helen Viola Jackson. I didn’t know that, but it was at the bottom of your Wikipedia link :)
  
  source
  - Alto@kbin.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Ah yep, you're right that's the one I was thinking of. Both are pretty interesting, forget how young this country is sometimes.
    
    source
- AmidFuror@fedia.io ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Let's say he was 18 at the end of the war on 1865. That was 159 years ago they have to split between his remaining lifetime and all of hers. It's possible they both lived to 90.
  
  Less plausible is that his pension would go to a spouse he married after he retired from the service. Anyone know anything about that in modern times?
  
  source
  - Alto@kbin.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    So I went to double check, and I got a fair bit of it wrong.
    
    Irene Triplett
    She was actually the daughter of the woman I thought I was talking about. Her mother married her father at ages 29 and 78 respectively, and she was born one of five children in 1930, living until the age of 90 before passing in 2020.
    
    source
  - zout@fedia.io ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    It could have happened, if Helen Viola Jackson would have applied for the pension.
    
    source
- bobburger@fedia.io ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It was a pretty common phenomenon. Wikipedia article about the subject
  
  source
TheDoozer@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
This is the type of thing that could be answered if people followed banal statistical data the way sports people follow sports data.

“This is the first time since 2017 they’ve scored over 30 points in the third quarter in a home game during the pre-season.”

source
- SkipWapPallyPap@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Honestly it would be kind of fun to hear those statistics. “This is the first time in 10 years SkipWapPallyPap has remembered an important before the date”.
  
  source
- dogsnest@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  …on the first Sunday after the first full moon, post Vernal equinox.
  
  source
KazuyaDarklight@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
IMO, rather personal, and not statistically valuable information. Someone would need to scour endless records from different sources combining the info together and at best, they’d end up with a Guinness world record entry of some sort. Depending on the quality and age of records too you’re likely going to run into issues distinguishing people of the same name somewhere along the line.

source
- SkipWapPallyPap@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  True but that to me is why this question is kind of stupid. Luckily this community empowers me to ask questions like this.
  
  source
Kraven_the_Hunter@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Honestly, the answer probably involves a child bride somewhere…

source
- SkipWapPallyPap@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I was thinking more along the lines of geriatric and quick turn around…
  
  source
  - Kraven_the_Hunter@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    That could work too. So like Anna Nicole Smith. Don’t know if she remarried though.
    
    source
    -> View More Comments
deegeese@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Sounds like a really complicated way to avoid probate.

source
- Alice@hilariouschaos.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Removed
  
  source
half_built_pyramids@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
What’s the remarry time frame limit? We talking next day?

source
- SkipWapPallyPap@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Nah just in general. I mean it would work even if they get married the day before they pass away as long as their spouse gets married again and continues the cycle.
  
  source