Changing Definition of Incest: 52 Ancestors 2025 Prompt “Language”

Elmer Cook’s Non-Incestuous “Incestuous” Marriage

Elmer Cook: 1892-1936 (Maternal Second Cousin 3x Removed)
 

Ancestry Pro had flagged some of the people on my tree as lacking sources, so I set out to fix some of them, including second cousin Elmer Cook. When I started reviewing hints for Elmer, in addition to finding proper sources for his birth and death dates, I found some eye-opening news articles about his life. I was especially shocked to read that he was arrested for incest in Kentucky in October 1926. But the more I read, the more confused I became. The supposed incest described in the news article is no longer considered incestuous at all! Has the word changed meaning, or is legal language simply different than common usage?

So what did Elmer Cook do that landed him in jail? He married his father’s widow—a woman unrelated to him except by marriage. This hardly meets the current definition of incest, which involves sexual contact between close blood relatives. However, the Kentucky statutes still include stepparent and stepchild relationships under the incest statute, which reads as follows:

530.020 Incest.

(1) A person is guilty of incest when he or she has sexual intercourse or deviate sexual intercourse, as defined in KRS 510.010, with a person whom he or she knows to be his or her parent, child, grandparent, grandchild, great-grandparent, great-grandchild, uncle, aunt, nephew, niece, brother, sister, first cousin, ancestor, or descendant. The relationships referred to herein include blood relationships of either the whole or half blood without regard to legitimacy, relationship of parent and child by adoption, relationship of stepparent and stepchild, and relationship of step-grandparent and step-grandchild.

Apparently several other states have similar definitions. I can certainly see how a stepparent relationship with a much younger stepchild partner could be considered an imbalance of power and sexual grooming and thus be a criminal act, but that hardly applied in the case of Elmer and his stepmother, who were both in their thirties when arrested. So obviously, the legal definition of incest can be quite different than what the layman understands is incestuous.

So how did Elmer get into this situation?

Elmer Cook was born January 12, 1892 to parents George “Ned” Cook and Arra “Airry” Moseley. He was the third of their four children. Airry died when Elmer was only two years old, and Elmer’s father went on to marry two other women, Mary Addie Farrell and Bessie Arnold. George married Bessie April 26, 1912. George was 54, and Bessie was only 23. They went on to have seven children over the fourteen years of their marriage; these children were Elmer’s half-siblings.

By the time George died on August 8, 1926, Elmer was 34 and still living at George’s home. Bessie was 39. According to the article, Bessie decided to marry Elmer because the neighbors were insisting that they needed to marry—they were probably offended that an unmarried man was living with the widow, and assumed the worst (whether or not their assumptions were correct). Bessie argued that she was unaware that Kentucky law forbade such a marriage, which is understandable. She had probably never thought of Elmer as her son, after all, for he had been an adult, nearly twenty, when she married Elmer’s father. Admittedly, the wedding was a bit hasty. George died in August, and she married Elmer only a month later.

The supposedly incestuous union was quickly annulled following Elmer and Bessie’s arrest. Apparently, they were released from custody once the marriage was annulled and faced no further fines or jail time. Both went on to marry other people.

Elmer married Lula Aldrich sometime around 1928. They had three children, Thomas, born April 24, 1931; Lottie May, born April 26, 1933; and Mary Alice, born March 27, 1935.

Elmer had some run-ins with the law as a young man. He had various problems selling land he inherited from his mother’s family, and was taken to court over it. He was charged with grand larceny in 1916 over the theft of brass fittings from a local company.

 

But in 1936, he ran into more serious trouble. Elmer was working at a slaughterhouse, and lodging in Owensboro. He got into an altercation with another lodger named Will Warren. Apparently Elmer had a pocketknife and used it to slash Warren on the forehead. Warren had a butcher knife, and stabbed Elmer in the abdomen. News articles stated Elmer’s intestine was perforated, and that surgery was unsuccessful in saving his life. He died on October 16, two days after the stabbing.

 

In another example of strange legal language, the killer, Warren, was first charged with “malicious cutting”, which seems to downplay the seriousness of the incident. Following Elmer’s death, the charge was changed to murder, but only after Elmer’s brother Arthur swore out a warrant. The killer was eventually able to cut a plea deal for voluntary manslaughter and ended up with a ten-year sentence for Elmer’s death.

Elmer’s family was devastated by his loss. His wife was unable to care for the three children and farmed them out to separate relatives who ended up raising them.

 

Sources:

News Articles from the Owensboro Messenger, Owensboro, KY. , all accessed on Newspapers.com:

            “Elmer Cook is Held Over to the Grand Jury”. April 23, 1916.

            “Marriage License.” Sept. 24, 1926.

            “Man Marries Step-mother”. Oct. 8, 1926.

            “Divorce Suit.” Oct 9, 1926.

            “Man is Stabbed in Abdomen Here”. Oct. 15, 1936.

            “Butcher Knife Wound is Fatal to Elmer Cook.” Oct. 17, 1936.

            “Knife Victim to Be Buried Today.” Oct. 18, 1936.