Uploaded April 2021 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
This session is part of “Perspectives in History,” the 2021 Oklahoma History Conference. It will explore Oklahoma Territory’s role as the last divorce mill in the broader Victorian Divorce Crisis of the 1890s. The mill that thrived in Guthrie from 1891 to 1897 gained national notoriety and led to the creation of a moral congress to address the growing panic, with Oklahoma Territory used as a public example of the phenomenon and need for federal change in territorial divorce policy. This session is an extension of Lynch’s MA thesis research that studies not only the history of divorce in the US, but historical perspectives of divorce and the misremembrance of it as a modern cultural event. Lynch also explores the significance of the Victorian divorce-seekers in creating an avenue for discussions of gender and legal protection in domestic partnerships that is echoed today.
Jennifer Lynch is a historian and educator. She has served as an associate education curator at the Oklahoma History Center and is an instructor at the University of Central Oklahoma.
This session is part of “Perspectives in History,” the 2021 Oklahoma History Conference. It will explore Oklahoma Territory’s role as the last divorce mill in the broader Victorian Divorce Crisis of the 1890s. The mill that thrived in Guthrie from 1891 to 1897 gained national notoriety and led to the creation of a moral congress to address the growing panic, with Oklahoma Territory used as a public example of the phenomenon and need for federal change in territorial divorce policy. This session is an extension of Lynch’s MA thesis research that studies not only the history of divorce in the US, but historical perspectives of divorce and the misremembrance of it as a modern cultural event. Lynch also explores the significance of the Victorian divorce-seekers in creating an avenue for discussions of gender and legal protection in domestic partnerships that is echoed today.
Jennifer Lynch is a historian and educator. She has served as an associate education curator at the Oklahoma History Center and is an instructor at the University of Central Oklahoma.
