This is leap year—a one-in-every-four-years time when February claims an extra day. Blame Julius Caesar for introducing the idea to the calendar system—or blame Pope Gregory, who helped set up the calendar as we use it today.

With this day always “leaping” on an even-numbered year, in 1904, many men likely did blame Caesar and Gregory for their oversight—such as one rather wealthy man from Grand Forks County, who, “from brooding over the hallucination that all the widows and old maids in the country wanted to marry him,” became insane and he had to be committed to the state hospital. The man’s fear of this untoward behavior of all the ladies was reported as “owing probably to its being leap year.”

He was expected to stay probably only six to eight months—and the leap year day would be well behind him, by then.

But this man wasn’t the only one who may have feared for his bachelorhood on the extra day of the year.

Senator Hansbrough, who served in Washington, D.C., received this letter, which was assessed as being put “in a very frank manner, all of which she probably justifies because this is leap year.”

The woman wrote: “Dear Senator: I read you are one of the widowers of the senate who would more than likely be the one who would be next to get married. Now, I write you this to ask you, if you are not engaged to any lady, if you consider myself as a candidate for that sacred trust. I find life too lonesome to be without a good man. You may think this very impertinent in me to write you, but I assure you I am no adventuress, only one who is lonely, and there are no eligible men in this town.

“I will wait with patience your answer; then I will tell you more of myself and who I am.”

In answer, Hansbrough had his secretary, who was reportedly “an unfeeling man, and fully capable of slamming the door in the face of hope,” reply to the widow’s letter.

Perhaps they should have followed the lead of the 23 bachelors of Crocker, South Dakota, who, four years later, reportedly created a “Young Men’s Protective Association,” of which the goal was to “secure mutual help against maids with matrimonial intentions…since this is leap-year.”

By Sarah Walker

Sources:
January 19, 1908, Grand Forks Daily Herald, p.1
January 31, 1904, Grand Forks Daily Herald, Sunday (morning), p.6
January 1904, Vol. 9, no. 1, The Record

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