I have just received a copy of a marriage license for Bertha TROST and John PILGER (she was my maternal great-aunt). Both lived in Belleville, but they went to St. Louis to marry. Bertha gave her age as 19, but I believe she would have been 17, at most. Was St. Louis a sort of Gretna Green, a place where underage couples could marry easily? Part of Bertha's problem might have been that her mother was dead and her father was in a home for soldiers and sailors in Ohio, so probably there was no one authorized to give her permission to marry. This is just curiosity on my part. :) Thanks, Jane H. Brown Pearland, TX researching TROST, LETTER, WUERTZ, HEMMER, ERNST, SOOY, WRIGHT, among others in St. Clair Co and St. Louis area.