"She Said She Would Rather Live By Herself"
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| Cover from a pulp fiction novel, 1948. Source |
The biggest event for Nan in 1947 was her divorce from Richard Morenus. Their divorce hearing took place on June 19, 1947 at the Superior Court of Cook County before Judge Edwin A. Robson. Richard, the plaintiff, was represented by lawyer Ralph C. Blaha; M. G. Kaufman appeared for Nan, the defendant.
Nan did not attend the hearing. In Illinois in 1947 “a divorce
decree was granted to any spouse who provided the necessary evidence to prove
the other spouse guilty of an act that constituted a legal ground for the
dissolution of marriage,” history scholar Katherine L. Caldwell explains. “Divorces could only be granted to an ‘innocent’ party, so
if it were determined that both spouses had sufficient grounds for divorce, no
divorce was possible.” [I know - Catch 22.]
One of the many grounds allowed by Illinois law was “willful desertion without reasonable cause for over a year,” and one year’s residence in the state was required before a divorce petition could be filed. The legal process required an adversarial form of complaint in which the plaintiff had to make formal charges against the defendant in open court. Because most couples separated and got a lawyer to negotiate the settlement prior to going to court, uncontested or default cases were the norm, and one party – the defendant – did not usually appear in court. [Source: Caldwell, Katherine L. “Not Ozzie and Harriet: Postwar Divorce and the American Liberal Welfare State.” Law & Social Inquiry, vol. 23, no. 1, 1998, pp. 1–53.]
Richard Testifies
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| Excerpt from Richard's testimony on June 19, 1947. Certificate of Proceedings, Superior Court of Cook County, Illinois. |
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| Excerpt from Richard's testimony on June 19, 1947. Certificate of Proceedings, Superior Court of Cook County, Illinois. |
Richard testified on his own behalf, with his lawyer asking the questions. He claimed that he had been living in Cook County since 1928. When asked about the circumstances leading up to his separation from Nan on February 22, 1946, Richard stated, “It was necessary for me to make a business trip and be away for a considerable length of time and she refused to accompany me and said she would rather live by herself.” He went on to describe where they were living in Sioux Lookout. “Living as we were it would be impossible for her to live alone,” he testified. “If I stayed there it would mean giving up my business so we could live there. I was living on an island and we were living alone and there was no one there to take care of the heat but myself and she couldn’t possible live there alone. She said, ‘You live your life and I will live mine’ and she took a place to live and we lived separate since.”
Kaufman, Nan’s lawyer, asked only three questions of Richard. When asked if he had attempted to get Nan to come back to the United States with him, Richard answered yes. “She refused to come back?” Kaufman asked, to which Richard again answered in the affirmative. “You haven’t lived with her since then?” No, replied Richard. Blaha interjected, “He is a writer and he travels to get the scene of his stories.”
Witness Testimony
A deposition by Frank Ross, taken on Richard’s behalf in Toronto on June 6, 1947, was then presented to Judge Robson. Ross, a resident of Toronto, said he had known the Morenuses for a year and a half. He claimed he had observed them living together, stating that Richard gave Nan “all attention and all affection that a husband could give a wife.” Ross said Richard had left Sioux Lookout in about August 1946 to take a job in Chicago. “I was advised by the husband that the wife refused to accompany him,” he testified. “If Mrs. Morenus deserted Mr. Morenus,” Ross was asked, “will you state the time, place and other facts of circumstances known to you which attended such desertion.” Ross replied, “The wife refused, as I am advised, to accompany the husband to Chicago in 1946. I was advised by the husband that he had reason to believe that the wife had been unfaithful to him.” (My emphasis.) Ross concluded his deposition by stating that Nan was still living in Sioux Lookout.
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| Excerpt from the deposition of Frank Ross June 6, 1947. Certificate of Proceedings, Superior Court of Cook County. |
The Morenus divorce hearing took about 15 minutes. As with all Chicago divorce cases of the day, Judge Robson only had the information presented to him by both parties. He had no way of ascertaining whether or not that information was true. “The ritualized, perjurious testimony made a mockery of [a judge's] courtroom,” Caldwell writes (1998), “and the important decisions about the divorce itself and particularly the post-divorce finances were kept out of their control.” Frustrated judges tended to simply ratify whatever settlement agreement had been negotiated before the hearing. Judge Robson, who soon went on to lobby for the reform of Illinois divorce laws, issued a divorce decree to the Morenuses.
Divorce Decree
The divorce decree from the Cook County Circuit Court in Illinois is dated June 27 of that year - immediately prior to Nan's departure in July on her canoe expedition with Joe. According to the decree, Nan was given due notice of the suit. Richard had apparently been living in the State of Illinois for over a year preceding the divorce filing. He claimed that "during all the time he lived and cohabited with the said defendant, plaintiff conducted and demeaned himself as a true, kind and affectionate husband." Richard claimed that Nan had left him on February 22, 1946 and had never returned.
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| Decree for Divorce, June 27, 1947. Source: Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois. |
On June 27, 1947, Richard and Nan's divorce was official. Richard's fifth marriage was over, and he was already living with Nora Smith in Escanada, Illinois. They married on October 1, 1948 in Minnesota.
As for Nan, I have not yet been able to determine her whereabouts from August of 1947 until she turned up in northern Saskatchewan in the autumn of 1948. Nan's friend, 94-year-old Dorothy Maskarine told me in a phone call (June 18, 2021) that she heard Nan went to Edmonton, Alberta, possibly with a man named Joe. Bob Lee writes that Nan had gone to Squamish, BC. [Source: The North Called Softly, Prince Albert, SK. Unpublished, 1977.]
One thing is clear, however. Nan was determined to become a prospector.
NEXT: Nan the Writer, Part 2: "The Woman's Bushed!" - Click HERE
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