Here’s a Valentine’s saga to think about.

A Western  Illinois man once was thrown in jail for getting married.

OK, Plymouth paramour Jesse Gibbs did not formally divorce his first five wives, and got busted for bigamy after exchanging vows with the sixth.

The betrothals happened between 1910 and 1919. Now, some accounts make it seem that the women were…uh…a little loose in their affections, but Gibbs didn’t deny responsibility as a rapacious Romeo.

Even as he stood before a judge, the love-obsessed Lothario said he wanted to stage a play entitled “Is Marriage a Failure?” He claimed five of his spouses had agreed to appear in the production, and that he was still working on the sixth.

The judge was not amused, and sentenced Gibbs to two years in prison. The sanguine seducer was thrown into the Joliet Correctional Center, one of the toughest lockups in the country.

But no murderer was a match for the lady killer. A Chicago woman Gibbs had known for a few years visited her jailbird gigolo regularly. You guessed it, she had a marriage license and an apartment waiting when he got out of the pen.

Records don’t show it, but the bliss probably didn’t last, because the woman is not buried with Gibbs, who died at 74 on April 20, 1958.

There is a bit of mystery beyond the veil. The person buried next to Jesse in Plymouth’s Rosemont Cemetery is listed as “Douglas P. Gibbs.” However, the word “wife” appears directly under the name “Douglas.”

Could the male moniker be a disguise for Jesse’s Number 8?

Perhaps Cupid knows, but the story will be included in a book to be published later this year by Augusta native Brent Engel.