HARDEKOPF/METTER marriage

METTER, HARDEKOPF

Posted By: Tammy (email)
Date: 9/23/2010 at 15:39:48

WEDS AND GETS $10,000 LEGACY

Grundy County Man Takes Wife at 65

SHE POPPED QUESTION

His Money Not Available Until He Wedded

Iowa City, Ia., Jan. 21.—(Evening .Press.)—Mrs. Wilhelmina Lena Metter, a widow from Philip, S. D., was married in the hospital here to Fritz Hardekopf, a patient, whom she knew years ago in Germany. She saw an advertisement in a German paper that Hardekopf was left $10,000 if he married. So she hunted him up and proposed. She has much farming property of her own. Her first husband was ill seven years before he died, and she says she is used to invalid husbands.

Hardekopf a Grundy Man.

Grundy Center, Iowa, Jan. 21.—(Special.)—When the Evening Courier of Waterloo telephoned the news of the marriage of Fritz Hardekopt to this city today, it created quite a sensation, as the groom is well known in Grundy county. For some time past he has been cared for by the board of supervisors. They sent him to the hospital at Iowa City for treatment. He is about 66 years old, and has no relatives in this vicinity.

Lacked Nerve to Propose.

The story gained currency here several months ago that Hardekopf was the beneficiary of a relative's will to the amount of $10,000, but the inheritance would be paid only on condition that the legatee should marry. A relative of Hardekopf reported this fact to one of the menmbers of the board of supervisors, and when the newspapers got hold of the story they featured it in flaring type. So unique were the conditions and so palpitant were they with human interest that the story grew larger and larger the farther it travelled, and it never ceased traveling until it had spanned the broad Atlantic ocean. In the press of Germany the recital of the unusual conditions was given a prominent place on the first page, and it was little wonder that Mrs. Metter, while conning the columns in search of some odd bit of news from her adopted land should have read it with a gasp of amazement.

Scores of Women Investigate.

The auditor of Grundy county soon after the story was published began to receive letters addressed in a feminine hand. They exhaled the perfume of roses, violets and lilacs, and the stationery was of the most stylish kind.

The writers were women who wished to gain additional facts about Mr. Hardekopf; wanted his description, his age and all the particulars about his provisional legacy. For a time the mail was cluttered with these missives from women, young and middle-aged, who were willing to help Hardekopf fulfill the conditions of his remarkable legacy.

--Waterloo Evening Courier (Waterloo, Iowa), 21 January 1910