# Port Chester Daily Item/1923/Woman Claims To Be Max Friese's Wife and Shows Documents In Proof

Max E. Friese Sr. (1869-1923) in the Port Chester Daily Item on February 28, 1923.
Woman Claims To Be Max Friese's Wife and Shows Documents In Proof. Comes to Rye and Demands to Be Shown the Body of the Deceased Merchant. Produces Documents to Show That She and Mr. Friese Were Married In Brooklyn, December 19th 1921. Lived With Him Several Months and He Gave Out the Information That She Was Only His Housekeeper. A woman who has proved herself to have been for more than a year the lawful wife of Max E. Friese Sr., prominent Rye merchant who was found dead in bed Monday forenoon has provided Rye folk with a piece of news which in most quarters has been surprising almost to the point of being sensational. Mr. Max Friese's first wife, a woman who was widely known and had many friends to Rye died about two years, or perhaps a little more ago. Though rumors to that effect had been current at various times even members of Mr. Friese's family were not aware that he had remarried. In fact he had denied the truth of these rumors on several occasions, and when the women who now proves to have been his wife occupied an apartment with him in Rye during apart of the past year, he told both relatives and friends that she was merely a paid housekeeper. When she left town some time later, that fact loaned credibility to his denials of the wedding. There are some who say however that several months ago he introduced the strange women to them as his wife. The fact that Mr. Friese had married not very long after his first wife's death was not definitely established until the second Mrs. Friese came to Rye on Monday and insisted upon seeing the body. She proclaimed herself to have been the dead man's wife had the latter's Jon Is said to have at first refused to accept the truthfulness of that statement, insisting she had mainly been his father's housekeeper, a paid servant. Then it was that the secret bride produced what has since been proved to be genuine wedding certificate showing that on December 19, 1921 Max E. Friese Sr. fifty-one years of age of Rye and Mrs. Clara Martha Hayes forty-nine, a widow residing at 129 Chauncey street, Brooklyn were married in Borough Hall Brooklyn by Deputy City Clerk Thomas F. Maher. The only witness was the clerk to the marriage license bureau. The former Mrs. Hayes is said to be the mother of two grown children, a daughter and son. In spite of name which would seem to indicate that she is Irish or of Irish ancestry she is said lo be a German woman and to speak German fluently. Mr. Friese was a native of Germany and was said to have met Mrs. Hayes through a follow countryman who was a friend of both. When the Rye man went back to visit his native land a year or so ago the widow is said to have been at the pier to bid him bon voyage before he sailed. Those who have seen her say that she is a woman very evident respectability and perhaps of some means. Though she hurried to Rye just as soon as she had learned, in some strange way, of her husband’s death. Mrs. Friese made no effort to interfere with the funeral arrangements as they were being made by the dead man's two children. The remains with her consent were taken to the home of his son-in-law and daughter Mr. and Mrs. George I. Conover Jr. on School street, Rye and the funeral will be held from there tomorrow morning at ten o'clock. Members of Port Chester Lodge of Elks of which Mr. Friese had been a member for years, will assemble at the clubhouse on North Main street, Port Chester, this evening at seven-thirty and will proceed in automobiles to the Conover residence. There the Order's ritual for the deed will be recited over Mr. Friese's remains. The service will start at eight o'clock. There is much speculation in Rye as to what effect Mr. Friese's second marriage will have upon the distribution of his considerable estate. His first wife is said to have had all the property in her name and willed it to the two children, leaving her husband but a life interest in the estate. Some time ago Mr. Friese sold his two large apartment houses, that on Purchase street in which his body was found, and that on School street to which his children occupy an apartment to Samuel Cohen of Port Chester. Rumors that Mr. Friese had committed suicide or had been accidentally asphyxiated by gas escaping from a heater to his room were set at rest yesterday by an examination of the official death certificate, which bears the signatures of Coroner Edward Fitzgerald and Health Officer George J. Hogben, M.D. The causes of death are given as "chronic endocarditis" and "acute cardiac dilatation," translated from medical phraseology means heart disease. This added specification is made on the certificate, "No evidence of violence or poisoning."
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