Talk:Chester Gillette

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Marriage

I will lodge a similar objection here to the one I lodged on the article "Murder of Grace Brown":

This article states that Brown pressured Gillette to marry her. This is unknown and cannot be stated as a fact. It is possible that she verbally did so, but this is not known for certain. What is known for certain is that nowhere in Brown's letters to Gillette does she use the words "marry" or "marriage". She pleads only for Gillette to "take her away". Neither does Gillette use the words "marry" or "marriage" in his letters to Brown.

It has been speculated that Gillette and Brown planned for her to be taken to a home for unwed mothers, and that this is what she meant by "take me away", but that this proved impossible for some reason, and that it was only then that Gillette hatched a murder plan. This is also unproven but its possibility points to the fact that it cannot be said for certain whether or not Brown ever pressured Gillette for marriage and whether or not Gillette ever promised it.

Likewise, it cannot be said for certain that, prior to her pregnancy, Brown assumed Gillette would marry her. Granted, it was common in the early 1900s for couples to engage in premarital sex, with the woman either assuming the man would marry her if she became pregnant, or extracting a promise from him that he would. Nevertheless, this couldn't have been universal, and in the absence of any evidence that Brown made such an assumption, I don't think it should be stated as fact that she did.

In addition, the article states that, after Brown had returned to her parents' farm in South Otselic for a period of time, she "returned to Cortland when she discovered that Gillette had been courting other girls." This is inaccurate. It is true that, while Brown was at the farm, Gillette escorted other young women to social affairs. It is also true that Brown was aware of this, but surprisingly, she did not object to this in her letters to Gillette. At one point, she wrote him that she was glad he had a girl to escort to a Fourth of July gathering.

Brown never returned to Cortland after she left it for her parents' farm. She wrote to Gillette, requesting that he meet her at an inn in a town near to South Otselic. Unfortunately, I cannot now remember the name of the town, and have not been able to find it through Google, but I am quite certain of this, having read two full length books about this murder, although I don't currently have the books at hand. Brown and Gillette met in this town, and from there they went to Utica to spend the first night of their trip.

The article needs to be reorganized. The part about Gillete's raised voice and Brown's tears at the factory, and Gillette playing for time, should come before the part about her returning to the farm in South Otselic, since the former occurred before the latter. Jersey Jan (talk) 22:47, 26 August 2024 (UTC)