The Hunt for the Runaway Wife
After his wife eloped to Seattle with a family friend, a jilted husband tracked her across the coast to initiate a legal reckoning.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Some four years since, Wm. Morgan and Mary J. Morgan, his wife, were living happily together in San Francisco. Some accident befell William and he was compelled to go to the hospital. During his sickness the perfidious Mary eloped with a friend named Jos. Gray, and with him came to this city, and Joseph procured employment at the Seattle coal mine, where they have ever since resided, representing themselves to be husband and wife. Three children have been born to them in the interval. On his leaving the hospital, Morgan devoted himself to the search for his guilty wife and her paramour, but without success until recently, when he received information which led him to believe that they were up here. He consequently came up on the last Dakota and succeeded in ferreting them out, and having them arrested for adultery. They were brought before Justice Scott this afternoon, waived examination and were bound over in the sum of $400 to await the action of the grand jury. The wife had just begun proceedings for a divorce from Morgan, previous to his unexpected arrival. Altogether it is a first-rate sensation on a small scale. Both men seem to be decent, honest looking laborers.
“Altogether it is a first-rate sensation on a small scale.”
This 1873 report highlights the raw, public nature of marital disputes in early Seattle, where social shame and legal intervention were the primary mechanisms for managing private failures. Today, while adultery remains a private matter of civil divorce law, the 'small scale' sensation reflects the same community curiosity that still surrounds the personal lives of neighbors in our rapidly growing city.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.