Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 40, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 January 1908 — GIVEN DIVORCE WITH ALIMONY [ARTICLE]

GIVEN DIVORCE WITH ALIMONY

Fred Stewart Did Not Appear When His Wife Brought Suit at Kokomo Saturday. Fred Stewiart, the young stone road contractor, who with his father held the Hanging Grove contract, was the defendant in a divorce suit at Kokomo last Saturday. He did not appear against his wife, and the county sheriff who was sent after him could not find him. The divorce was granted along with alimony, in the sum of SI,OOO, following the recital by Mrs. Stewart of her husband’s infidelity. For the past two years Stewart has been in charge of the Hanging Grove contract, and his wife told how she came from Kokomo and kept house for him in a shack, putting up with all manner of inconviences in order to aid her husband in his labors, aud that she frequently called there after he and the gang of workmen had secured a boarding house, but found that he was often away from his work. She became suspicious when told that some woman had often called him by telephone, and that he had told those who heard him talking that it was his wife. She had never called him by telephone aud so she began to do detective work, the result of which was the discovery that the feminine, he had so frequently been called by, was the divorced wife of Wilfred Sellers, formerly Nellie Hume, a telephone girl at Kokomo. She found how Nellie had spent eleven days at one stretch with him at the Monon hotel, where he had registered as Fred Stewart and wife. She also found that he had register ed at a Rensselaer hotel for himself and also for “Dorthy Clark, of Kokomo,” and found that he had paid the bill for both. When they were married in 1898 his parents had deeded him a residence property but it was not clear of debt. They had sold their equity in this for SI,OOO and Mrs. Stewart had placed $l5O of her own money with it aud they had deposited it with the understanding that it was to be withdrawn only for the purpose of buying a new home. Stewart had, however, squandered the entire amount, as well as most of the earnings from the stone road contract. The testimony showed that Fred had purchased a cook stove, a gasoline stove and some groceries for his enamorata, Nellie Hume. Fred’s father testified that he had run thru with $2,700. Fred had certainly traveled the primrose path of sin at a killing pace if all the testimony at the trial, at which he refused to be present, was true.