Martha Keys
Kentucky Post, Saturday, 8 December 1906, page 3
Martha Keys, who was given a judgment for alimony some weeks ago in the Campbell Circuit Court in her suit against John Keys, a well to do colored farmer of Mason co. Ky. filed an affidavit today in the case in response to the answer of her husband, who was ruled up to show cause why he had not paid the alimony adjudged against him. Keys in his answer, alleged his marriage with Martha Keys was invalid, because of her having had a husband living at the time she and Keys were married.
In her affidavit she states she was married to Gilpin Gibbs in 1877 and lived with him until 1882 when he abandoned her. Two years later, he shot and wounded her and then escaped. She never heard from him and after a number of years she went to Judge Whitaker of Maysville and he had advised her she could remarry, her first husband having been gone for over five years.
Mrs. Keys further states in her young days she was a slave and had no opportunity to receive an education and is therefore illiterate; she, acting upon the advice of her legal advisor, she and Keys both believed they were lawfully married and she never knew any better until he filed his response to the rule issued against him.