A Short-Lived Union
A Snohomish County couple files for divorce just two months after their wedding day, citing incompatibility and the isolation of ranch life.
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.
A record in the marriage and divorce line has undoubtedly been established in Snohomish county, papers in divorce proceedings being filed in just one day over two months after the marriage vows had been taken. On May 27, this year, Barthold Julius Focks swore to love, cherish and protect Ella Focks, his then wife, but there seems to have been a complete change of sentiment since that time. According to the complaint filed, Mrs. Focks concluded on July 15 that she no longer wished to live with her formerly beloved Barthold, for she then left him. The complaint stated that there is utter incompatibility of temperament, and also alleged desertion on July 15. Judge Denney granted the prayer of plaintiff and he now stands divorced from his erstwhile wife. According to the testimony, Focks met his wife while she was visiting neighbors near his ranch, and, being a bachelor and in need of a wife, he wooed and won her. However, country life soon proved unsatisfactory to Mrs. Focks and she returned to Everett, refusing to go back to her newly made home.
“Country life soon proved unsatisfactory to Mrs. Focks and she returned to Everett, refusing to go back to her newly made home.”
While divorce rates were stigmatized as record-breaking novelties in 1903, the tension between urban life and the realities of rural homesteading remains a familiar story in the Pacific Northwest’s evolving landscape.
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