19. The Morenus Marriage Ends

 "She Said She Would Rather Live By Herself"

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

Excerpt from Richard's testimony on June 19, 1947. Certificate of Proceedings, Superior Court of Cook County, Illinois.

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.

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.

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

PREVIOUS: Road to Divorce - Click HERE

INDEX TO BLOG SERIES: Click HERE

 

©Joan Champ, 2021. All rights reserved.

 

17. Tension in the Bush

The Problem of Being Alone Together

 

Division of labour in the wilderness: Kathrene Pinkerton prepares a meal while her husband Robert writes at their desk. Source: Kathrene Pinkerton, A Home in the Wilds (formerly Wilderness Wife). New York: Tanlinger Publishing Co., [1939], 1967.

“The problem, simply, is that of being alone together. ... Isolation is a special pitfall to the couples in the wilderness. Key to the domestic economy, as crucial as loading firewood, are measures the couple take to avoid crowding each other, rubbing up against each other to the point of irritation."  - Randall Roorda [Source: "Wilderness Wives: Domestic Economy and Women's Participation in Nature," in This Elusive Land: Women and the Canadian Environment. Melody Hessing, Rebecca Raglon, and Catriona Sandilands, eds. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2005, p. 46.]

Kathrene Pinkerton and her husband Robert, who, like Nan and Richard Morenus, had moved from New York City to live in a one-room cabin in northern Ontario, recognized that they each needed their own space. Pinkerton wrote the following in her 1939 book Wilderness Wife which Nan had read:

Our winter days fell naturally into a schedule. Robert wrote every morning ... while I inspected the trap line. In the afternoon he was busy out-of-doors cutting wood or doing odd jobs and I had the cabin. This arrangement was not the result of a treaty. It had worked out naturally and was an unconscious recognition of the fact that two people cannot always be together. They must escape from each other occasionally if only to be demagnetized. And everyone must have his own domain. Without separate outlets into the world around us, a one-room cabin life would have permitted no individual privacies. The divergence in our interests gave us supper-time conversation.

Rugged Interdependence

The Morenus' first year at their cabin on the island near Sioux Lookout was spent in what Roorda calls a state of "rugged interdependence" - repairing the cabin, clearing windfall and brush, patching mattresses and bedding, fixing up canoes, and generally putting their camp into shape. There was little time for squabbles. “Less important than what wife or husband can do is what the couple does together," Roorda writes.

In addition, Nan and Richard had a shared interest in writing. "After the first year the typewriter was unlimbered, a certain number of hours each day had to be put in on the keyboard," Richard writes in his Maclean's article "From Broadway to Bush" (September 1, 1946). "Long experience of writing in the States had made our radio contacts not too difficult to maintain, and after convincing our markets that our mail service could meet their deadlines we turned our thoughts script-wise once again." 

Nan and Richard Morenus in northern Ontario. Source

 

Friction

“There’s an odd chemicalization that takes place in the wilderness,” Richard wrote in Crazy White Man (1952). He had noticed while acting as a guide for American sportsmen that, “however good friends two men may be, put them together for any period of time beyond the normal processes of society, and their nerves begin to react. It is almost as though the tempo of living in a city for fifty weeks out of the year acted as a drug, the removal of which caused a drastic mental reaction. By the fifth or sixth day they [start] to argue between themselves. About little things. Their laughter, at first so spontaneous, becomes strained and forced at each other’s attempts at humour.” Had this same “chemicalization” occurred between Richard and Nan?

Richard acknowledges in his Maclean's article that there had been some tough times during their five years on the island. "We have suffered discouragement and ofttimes heartbreaking disappointments," he writes. "There will always be these so long as we live in the bush." He also refers to Nan's independent nature. "Nan will get her own deer, and skin it herself," he says. "Her canoe needs a patch before being stored for the winter. This she’ll want to see to herself."

As the years went by, Nan had found many activities to occupy her time while Richard wrote. She learned how to set snares, how to bake bannock and bread, how to drive a dog team, how to fish through the ice, and how to hunt and butcher venison. She also took her turns at the typewriter.

Was there competition between Nan and Richard as they navigated wilderness living? Was Nan's striving toward self-reliance and expertise in the outdoors a source of irritation for Richard? Did he resent Nan's growing proficiency at tasks one would expect a man to perform - tasks like looking after their dog team? As her strength and skills developed, did Nan chafe against her husband's expectations of domesticity and dependency?

Whatever the causes of the Morenus' tension in the wilds of northern Ontario, their marriage did not survive the strain.

 

NEXT: Road to Divorce - Click HERE

PREVIOUS: Nan the Writer - Part 1: "Jim Chief" - Click HERE

INDEX TO BLOG SERIES: Click HERE

 

©Joan Champ, 2021. All rights reserved.

 

15. Nan Buys More Land

 Lakeshore Property

 

Nan's property was on the shore of Abram Lake directly across from the island (now Winoga Island) she shared with Richard Morenus. Google Earth, 2020.

For some reason Nan decided to buy more land in northern Ontario. Perhaps she bought it as an investment. Perhaps she wanted a place of her own, separate from the cabin she shared with her husband Richard Morenus, where she could write. Whatever her reasons, on July 7, 1943, Nan took possession of a four-acre piece of land on the shore of Abram Lake near Sioux Lookout, Ontario, directly across from the island she shared with Richard. At the time, there was no road into the property; it was only accessible from the lake. She paid $100 to Reverend Peter Gordon McPherson and his wife Nettie for the land, Parcel 10836, Lot 11, Concession 1. The transfer of this parcel of land was registered September 13, 1943.

Plan showing Nan's shoreline property, Crown Patent PA7842, April 23, 1932. Source: Ontario Land Titles, Kenora District.

The McPhersons had acquired the property in 1932 as the site for their summer home. They had lived in Sioux Lookout for decades, raising four children - a daughter and three sons - in the small Ontario town. Rev. McPherson, a United Church minister, had arrived in Sioux Lookout in 1916 and moved with his family to Leduc, Alberta in 1928. [The Lookout Post, May 22, 1952, p. 2.] 

 

Nan's Land Changes Hands

If Nan saw this land as an investment, she did not live to see the fruits of her purchase. When she died on September 3, 1950 from complications after giving birth to her only child, she did not have a will. As a result, the dispersal of her estate took years. The administration of Nan's estate, and ownership of her land, was turned over to the Crown Trust Company. It took Nan's second husband John Albrecht more than five years of negotiations to have the land transferred to him, "made in consideration of $200." 

Apparently there was some confusion on the part of the Crown Trust Company's Estates Officer Cyril Melville Corneil about Nan's name and marital status. He needed to ensure that Evangeline [Nan] Albrecht was the same person as Nan D. Morenus - the name on the land title. Also, because her divorce from Richard Morenus took place outside Canada, more paperwork was required. 

Cyril Melville Corneil's affidavit, October 3, 1955, Page 1 of 3. Source: Office of Land Titles, Kenora, Ontario.

During the course of these investigations, mistakes were made. In his Statement of Oath, October 3, 1955, Corneil wrote, "Due to an oversight, the property was not conveyed to the said John Erdmann Albrecht nor was a Caution registered under the provisions of Section 12 of the Devolution of Estates Act within three years after the death of the said deceased." An Administrator's Caution was not issued until November 5, 1955. It was not until January 31, 1956 that Land Transfer 53987 was issued, allowing Albrecht to buy his deceased wife's property for $200 before the disposition of the rest of Nan's estate. 

Disclosure document from John Albrecht's probate records. Source: British Columbia Archives, Royal BC Museum.

John Albrecht held onto Parcel 10836 near Sioux Lookout until his death on September 10, 1991 at age 92. In his last will and testament he bequeathed all his property to his niece, Margret Johanna Gumbolt of Maple Ridge, BC. By then, the land was valued at $5000. I have attempted several times to contact Margret Gumbolt without success, so I have no idea whether or not she ever visited the land she owned in northern Ontario - thanks to Nan and John.

John and Nan’s son John A. Danke, who lived in California, was the rightful heir of his father’s estate but the will was never contested.

Margret Gumbolt sold the lakeshore property in about 2010. The current owners Mat and Bev Lelonde built a home on the property and live there year 'round. Before they bought the land, it was only accessible by water or by ice road in the winter. A number of years ago, a one-lane road was constructed to provide access to the Lelonde property and about 18 other properties on Abram Lake. [Source: Email message from Dick MacKenzie, Sioux Lookout.]

 

NEXT: Nan the Writer, Part 1 - "Jim Chief" - Click HERE

PREVIOUS: Getting Around in Winter - Click HERE

INDEX TO BLOG SERIES: Click HERE

  

©Joan Champ, 2021. All rights reserved.