I ran across at least two distant female relatives-by-marriage who said they were widowed. One had her husband living in downtown St. Paul. It took ancestry to find the other husband; the wife and kids were in Calif and he was in Montana near some of my closer relatives. There is also the fact that all dicorcees were considered "fast"--and widows were usually more respectable. In the late 1960's or so my grandmother rented out her house's basement (in Richfield) to a young woman who appeared to be Doing Business there. Grandma (in her eighties or so) and her elderly female boarder were upset, thinking that the neighbors would think that they were wild widows... --my Mom held her evict the young woman, who worked at a local bank Kate