Joe Lobdell and Marie Perry had to fight to live and love in an unforgiving age. It had been a wild few days, even for Joseph Israel Lobdell, soon to be 42 years old that week in the fall of 1871. On Monday night, a gentleman named E.O. Ward of Bethany, Pennsylvania, had found Joe on his doorstep, singing and dancing in scandalous fashion. Tuesday morning, Joe had gotten into John Hacker’s wagon on a countryside drive, “hugging him all the way to town,” as the newspaper reports recounted. As if such tomfoolery wasn’t enough, Joe was then found kissing the statue of the local Civil War hero on Tuesday afternoon, climbing it before terrorizing a class full of schoolchildren the next day. | 