Wife-sale was never acknowledged officially but seems to have been an ingenious (if sexist) answer to a bad marriage among the less respectable parts of society in eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries England and America. Divorce at the time was out of reach for all those who could not afford great expense but were willing to see their reputations ruined in a lengthy court trial.
The frontier in American history, in fact and in fiction, was everywhere the site of excesses, violence, and license. Cumberland County from its first settlements through the post revolutionary years was no exception.
The photo of the lunch counter at Woolworth’s, taken at the reopening in 1959, brings back fond memories. When you were growing up and shopping with your mother at Woolworth’s, a milk shake or maybe a dish of ice cream at the lunch counter was the hoped for reward for having to endure waiting with her as she looked through the notions and the housewares departments. At the lunch counter you could swivel back and forth on the stool, stare at the dispenser that kept the orangeade cold and watch the lady cooking hamburgers on the grill.