Married first to Heinrich Kalman, the father of her only child, Elizabeth. Kalman was an abusive husband. Katherine Wagner Keller, her niece, tells of when Mary's daughter, Elizabeth, was a child and was crawling around and teething, she needed something to chew on and so her mother gave her a teaspoon. Elizabeth was playing in the yard and her mother forgot about the spoon. Her husband was angry with her because she couldn't find the spoon so he beat her and hit her so hard on her head that she had a big open wound. She left him and told her family she would take a beating from no man -- even if she had to get married a dozen times. She divorced Kalman.
Married a second time to another abusive man--whose name I don't know and for whom we have found no record in the Evangelische Familienbuch. Katherine Wagner Keller remembers that as a young child she and her mother went with a wagon to the house where Mary was living with her second husband--she was leaving him. Mary and Elizabeth, her sister, kept putting things in the wagon and the husband kept taking them off. He didn't want Mary to leave. He had two girls in their early teens--the younger one cried that she didn't want Mary to leave. The older one wasn't saddened at the leaving of her stepmother.
Michael Wagner came home from the war to be with his children--his first wife had died. As Katherine relates it, "they didn't get married, they went together." They were together a short time and then he took her home. He told her he couldn't stand the smell of a woman. "She probably didn't know how else to explain it. It was the monthly he couldn't stand--the smell of blood. He was in the war."
Mary decided to come back to the States. As Katherine tells the story, "The day she left was early morning. Uncle Mike lived right next door to us. He knew she was leaving. So as she went by his door, he grabbed her by the arm and pulled her in. He got her to stay with him. He got over the sickness he had (smell of blood problem). So in the morning, Aunt Mary came over to us. I remember it well. When Grandma saw her, she said, 'where are you coming from?' She told her 'next door." Grandma was mad. She swore at her and said 'didn't you have enough? He brought you back!' In a short time the whole family left for the States. Aunt Mary had a little land--not much. But they knew it would be enough for them to all come if they sold it. He didn't have enough for the whole family (his three daughters and son). So you see, if it hadn't been for her, they would not have come to the USA. But they didn't appreciate it. Aunt Mary had a kind heart. She just had a way where she, at times, was abrupt."
