Mary Sipes moved on with her life, but never forgot her first husband John. Or was his name Joe? Never forgot him, but it’s hard to remember. He was lost in the war, poor soul.
But which war?
It isn’t clear. Mrs Sipes was unsure about several things regarding the death of her husband. No official notification. “I suppose(d) he was killed in the war,” she wrote.
She just wasn’t sure. That’s why – years later – after she had remarried, she got a little nervous about the report of a John Sipes being eaten by a bear. She wrote a letter, hoping to clear it up.
It wasn’t so much the story of a man being eaten by a bear. The man being Mr Sipes. That was pretty bad, but still – hardly a story that would endure for most of a century. No, it was the pleading for information by the widow, written in a letter to an official, that has lasted all these years. (Spelling wasn’t her strong point…)
KIND AND RESPECTED CIR: I see in the paper that a man named J— S— was atacted at et up by a bare whose cubs he was trying to git when the she-bare came up and stopt him by eatin him up in the mountains near your town. What I want to know is did it kill him or was he only partly et up and he from this place and all about the bare. I don’t know but what he is a distant husband of mine. My first husband was killed in the war but the name of the man the bare et being the same I thought it might be him after all and I thought to know if he wasn’t killed either in the war or by the bare for I have been married twice since and their ought to be a divorce papers got out by him or me if the bare did not eat him all up. If if is him you will know it by having six toes on the left foot. He also sings base and has a spread eagle tattooed on his front chest and a ankor on his right arm which you will know him if the bare did not eat up these parts of him. If alive don’t tell him I am married to J—- W— for he never liked J—. Mebbe you had better let on as if I am ded but find out all you can about him, without him knowing anything what it is for. That is if the bare did not eat him all up. If it did I don’t see you can do anything and you needn’t take any trouble. My respeks to your family and please ancer back. P.S. was the bare killed. Also was he married again and did he leave any property worth me laying claim to?
No follow-up reports to let us know the number of toes on the foot of the bear-victim. Or whether he had been all “et up.”
But other versions of the story did follow-up. In some the widow was looking for John Siper. Or John Marsh. Or Joe White. The names changed but the narrative, with all its mispellings, was reprinted in papers across the country over the course of 75 years.
It is an official Urban Myth. The kind of story we love to hear and read – and this one has been passed around:
Bedford (IN) Daily Mail: 2-15-1899
Kewanna (IN) Herald: 1-13-1899
Tulia (TX) Herald: 12-30-1899
Harrisburg (IA) Reporter: 8-24-1906
Delphi Carroll County Citizen Times: 7-20-1907
Corydon (IN) Republican: 9-15-1921
Joplin (MO) Globe: 1-29-1922
Oil City (PA) news: 2-20-1974
Here is how the final re-publication (before this one) was attributed: The columnist for the Tulia (TX) Herald wrote on June 9, 1977 that the letter was first reported by “Bob Miller in the Hamilton Herald News” who claimed to have read it in the Comanche (TX) Chief, where publisher Mary Wilkerson wrote that it was reproduced from a TRUE article published on 12-30-1899.
That is the moral here. Sometimes, you just CAN’T believe it. Believe you, me.
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