Happy Valentine’s Day from Out of the Box! Although today is meant to be a celebration of love and romance, not all valentine cards have a happy back-story. This set of cards served as evidence in the 1911 divorce case between Iva Robinson Titzel and John A. Titzel, Jr., in Norfolk County (now Chesapeake). The couple met and married in Norfolk County in 1909. They moved to Brooklyn shortly thereafter and to Boston in February 1910. Iva returned to Norfolk County with her mother in April 1910, after a stay in the hospital for surgery for blood poisoning in her foot. John returned to Norfolk County at the end of September that year, and they made a brief attempt at reconciliation. By January 1911, however, Iva had decided she “could no longer live with him in safety” and by February had asked for a divorce.
According to a handwritten note on the cause, the case was dismissed in November 1911, on the motion of the plaintiff “on the ground that they have resumed their marital relations.” Whether they had a successful marriage thereafter is doubtful since John lists his marital status as single on the 1914 passenger list of the U.S.S. Coppename sailing from Belize. John Titzel died at sea in 1917 on the U.S.S. Momus, a transport ship carrying troops to France. Iva married again in 1918 to James Laracy and remained married to him until his death in 1956. She died in 1963 in Virginia Beach.