He Went West for Fourteen Years to Make His Fortune. She Found Him on a Seattle Street.
William Connerton kissed his six-month-old daughter goodbye and went looking for gold and luck from the Black Hills to Montana. He came back penniless, met a gray-haired wife and a 15-year-old stranger — and got a divorce.
Fourteen years ago William Connerton left his wife Julia and kissed his six-months-old girl, and started out to seek his fortune in the wild West. A few days since he ran across his wife on the streets of Seattle. Mrs. Connerton had remained faithful to her husband ever since, hopeful that he would return to her, and in the meantime had grown gray trying to support her child, who had grown into a handsome, bright young girl of 15 summers. Connerton did not know his daughter, nor did the daughter know her father until she was introduced to him.
The wanderer had wandered in the Black Hills, had been all over Colorado, Idaho, Montana and other places in search of a fortune, but it had, like an ignis fatuus, eluded his grasp, and he was just as poor as when he left his home in Pennsylvania fourteen years ago.
In the interview she had with him his wife learned that he did not feel able to support a family until he had secured the fortune he was seeking, and as he seemed disinclined to resume his marital relations, Mrs. Connerton concluded to apply for a divorce. This she did, and yesterday it was granted on the ground of abandonment. In the meantime Mr. Connerton is still searching after that fortune which he came West in search of.
Other decrees were granted the same day: Sarah E. Peterson from Carl Victor Peterson on the ground of cruelty — he had chased her out of the house with a gun and followed her to her relatives' home 'all the while trying to get a shot at her' — and Catherine A. Hood from Thomas Hood for failure to provide.
“Connerton did not know his daughter, nor did the daughter know her father until she was introduced to him.”
The story is an old one with a very current engine: a man leaves a young family behind because he cannot support them until he 'makes it,' and the years quietly reorder everything at home. Economic migration still splits households across states, and the people left raising the children are still the ones filing the paperwork.
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