Through the years, I have paused many times at the grave of Adeline Henson Combs, the youngest sister of my great, great, great-grandfather. Until I conducted further research this week and discovered some revelatory documents concerning her, my knowledge of Aunt Adeline’s life was minimal. Her parents, Charles and Elizabeth Henson, and her four older siblings – John, Sallie, James, and Jordan – had moved from Iredell County, North Carolina to present-day Watauga County around the time of her birth in 1829. Charles was dead by 1840, leaving his widow to raise their five children alone.
In time, the three boys married and started families of their own, although Jordan died in 1863 while in somewhat reluctant service of the Confederate Army. While Sallie never married, she gave birth to an illegitimate son in 1847. In adulthood, Sallie and Adeline continued living with their rheumatism-afflicted mother on the banks of Cove Creek in Watauga County’s Amantha community. Elizabeth Henson, an early Methodist whose land donation to the church resulted in her surname becoming the church’s namesake, died in 1886 at the age of one-hundred. Sallie succumbed a month later, and brother James followed in 1894, leaving John and Adeline as the surviving siblings. John had moved to a different section of the county, and so Adeline lived alone at the family homestead, seemingly destined to remain a spinster.
In a startling turn of events, however, a few weeks before Christmas 1897, Adeline became a bride at the “tender” age of sixty-eight. What was even more startling was that the groom, Tillett Combs, the son of a Methodist minister, was thirty-three years her junior. The local newspaper heralded the union of “the youthful couple.”
Tillett, a thirty-five-year-old widower and divorcee, was also native to the Amantha community, and he and Adeline had, no doubt, known one another all of Tillett’s life. As a teenager, he had worked as a hired hand on the farm adjoining that of middle-aged Adeline. Tillett’s first wife had died in 1893, leaving him with five children ranging in age from two to eleven. Within four months of his wife’s death, Tillett remarried in what was probably an attempt to provide a mother for his children, but that marriage was short-lived, his new wife abandoning him the same year. Tillett implored her to return, but she refused, and their divorce was finalized in the spring of 1897.
Subsequently, and for a about a year, Tillett paid repeated visits to Adeline at her home, and they “saw each other a heap of times on Sundays and sometimes of evenings.” According to Adeline, Tillett portrayed himself as a great friend to her and as a man of considerable means. She said he “earnestly begged and entreated her to marry him,” promising that his abundance was sufficient to support and provide well for her and vowing to be a kind and loving husband. Adeline felt their conversations were as normal and loving as anyone else’s, and she had “very good confidence in him.” Due to Tillett’s “continued attentions,” promises, and “repeated professions of love and affection” for her in the midst of her loneliness, she consented to marry him.
According to Adeline, on the night of their wedding at her home, Tillett abruptly stopped the ceremony and demanded that she issue him a deed to her thirty-five-acre farm. Adeline hesitated, saying she would prefer to wait a while, but Tillett insisted it be done before their exchange of vows, telling her “he had been bluffed one time (perhaps a reference to his failed second marriage) and did not want to be bluffed anymore.” In the absence of ink to write the deed, Tillett left to retrieve some, and having no one to advise her otherwise, Adeline complied with his request on the condition that he “discharge in all particulars the duties of a husband, such as maintaining and supporting her during her lifetime.”
With the deed in place, the ceremony proceeded, and Tillett and his children moved in with Adeline. While Adeline managed the housework, Tillett oversaw the income generated by the rental of her (now his) land to others. After four or five years, their union began to sour. In Adeline’s estimation, Tillett did not turn out to be a considerate husband, and there apparently was no conjugal relationship between them. According to her, Tillett started doing whatever suited him, sometimes staying out all night. On other occasions, he would lose his temper and curse, and one night, he threatened to kick Adeline out of their home. Adeline confessed that she, in turn, became angry at times and said things she should not have, although she denied ever cursing.
Despite these behaviors, their marriage surprisingly endured for thirteen years, but by 1910, eighty-one-year-old Adeline left Tillett and, believing she had no recourse, filed for divorce. Based on her lack of financial resources, the court granted her pauper status in order to sue Tillett for the recovery of her property and assigned a trio of attorneys to represent her. Adeline wanted the farm back because her mother had gifted it to her in 1878, and although she said she tried to compromise with Tillett, he refused.
The case against Tillett claimed he had made false promises and fraudulent representations and had exercised undue influence over his wife. It further portrayed him as a cruel and abusive husband who threatened to whip Adeline and refused to provide her with decent and comfortable clothing, only buying her two dresses and two or three pairs of shoes during their thirteen years together. The case also alleged that, while Tillett was receiving the rental profits from Adeline’s farm (about $150 annually), she was “working like a slave for him” until she became physically unable to manage, at which time Tillett’s eldest daughter and her husband came to assist. It was further claimed that Tillett moved “a common prostitute” – a young, widowed mother of three from an adjacent hollow – into the granary on Adeline’s farm and kept her as his concubine or mistress. When Adeline protested, Tillett allegedly responded with “vile and bitter abuse,” which made Adeline’s condition so intolerable and burdensome that she feared for her life and, three days later, left her childhood home and began living upon the charity of friends and relatives.
In his answer to Adeline’s complaints, Tillett stated that, prior to their marriage, she was actually the one who pursued him, sending word to him on several occasions by his first cousin that, if he would marry her, she would deed him her land – a claim that Adeline denied. Tillett also said that Adeline preferred him to be the one to take care of and support her. After three months of repeated imploring from Adeline, he assented to her proposal. Tillett denied that he had ever portrayed himself as a man of means or money and said Adeline knew he was not. He further denied making false or untrue statements to her or being deceptive or calculating. He claimed his only objective had been to procure a home for himself and his children, and that the signing of the deed before the marriage ceremony was Adeline’s idea and that it was carried out according to her expressed wishes. Tillett further denied all of Adeline’s other allegations and stated he had treated her properly and provided for her bountifully.
During a cross-examination, Tillett’s attorney asked Adeline, “Considering your advanced age and infirmities, [did you] not regard [the marriage] as a plain business transaction you were making with the defendant?” Adeline responded, “Well, I thought he was going by the deed but hasn’t done it; there’s where the trouble comes in.” The deed did, in fact, state that Tillett was to marry Adeline “and to discharge in all particulars the duties of a husband such as maintaining and supporting” her during her remaining years, and although Adeline reserved a lifetime interest in her property, she placed Tillett in possession and control of it “to manage to the best advantages.” Adeline admitted her aim was marrying Tillett so he would care for, protect, and maintain her, and she further admitted that, prior to her marriage to Tillett, she and another man in the community had “sparked a little,” but she denied propositioning that man to marry her in return for deeding him her farm.
Adeline stated that, although her husband had never given her anything, he did tell her to go to a nearby general store and get what she wanted, and she said she had charged a pair of shoes and an apron to Tillett’s account. Regarding the woman Tillett moved to the farm, Adeline said Tillett had informed her that, because he was making his crops, he would have to have someone take over the housework and cooking in light of Adeline’s inability to do so, and although she told him to get whoever he pleased, she did not expect it to be this woman of poor character and reputation. That same year, Tillett and the woman were charged with fornication and adultery but were found not guilty.
Court documents do not indicate how this case was resolved or if a divorce was ever granted, although, in the midst of these proceedings, Tillett and Adeline jointly deeded around thirty-six acres of land (seemingly Adeline’s former farm) to Adeline’s great-nephew and his wife, who was Tillett’s cousin.
Adeline died a few years later in 1913. Tillett subsequently married and divorced twice more. The first of these marriages occurred five months after Adeline’s death, and produced more children. Two years later, he reportedly fathered a child out of wedlock. His next marriage occurred in 1923 and lasted just shy of four years until Tillett filed for divorce, alleging that this, his fifth wife, had committed adultery, and their marriage was legally dissolved in 1927. Tillett and his fourth wife apparently reunited, but he died three years later in 1930 of tuberculosis.
On Adeline’s tombstone, carved just above her misspelled first name, is a pair of clasped hands, which traditionally symbolizes a final earthly farewell and/or a heavenly reunion. In light of her tragic matrimonial saga, however, these hands strike me as a testament to a union that attempted but failed to relieve two people’s desperation – that of Aunt Adeline seeking companionship to assuage her loneliness, and that of Tillett Combs, eager to provide a home and secure a future for his motherless brood.