Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1876-03-11
The Vinegar Bitters Divorce.


Jane Walker for divorce was before a
New York court, upon a motion for ali
mony and counsel fees, pending the
trial. The suit was begun in December,
the husband and wife occupying the
same house for four days afterward.
Then on his attempting to turn her out
she resisted, her waiting maid, cook and
coachman taking sides with her. Then
Mr.. Walker took possession of his horses
and carriages through a replevin suit
against his coachman. Mr.. Walker next
transferred his household property to
his son by former wife, and Mrs.
Walker quit the house, taking her SER
wants with her.
Ten affidavits on behalf of the hus-
band, covering over one hundred pages,
have been submitted, and twenty
answering affidavits of two hundred
pages have been presented for the wife.
Mrs. Walker denies the allegations made
against her by her husband, and
says that for the past five years she has
been more than half the time confined to
her bed, and was for one hundred days
out of her mind under the care of
physician and lady attendant. She shows
that the bills of her family physician
we're $500 year, and that she paid 5000
year for drugs. She produced twenty
Rx,n 1,;tY,acaac ta ol, tho% ha hr1c Pc
income exceeded 100000 year, and
that he squandered the whole of it.
Witnesses on the other side charged that
she was debauchee and drunkard, and
that her sickness was feigned.
In her answer, which covers forty
pages, Mrs. Walker says that she is
forty-one years old, that she was born in
Kentucky, and that she was married to
James P. Brenton at the age of sixteen.
She went with him to California IN 1862,
and there misfortune overlook her. She
first became acquainted with Walker in
California in 1866. Hc was poor, and
she earned the first thousand dollars he
ever possessed. She was after that the
architect of his fortune, secured by deal
ing in patent medicine. They were
married in San Francisco in 1868, and he
returned to New York with her in 1869,
millionaire. Gen. Joseph Lane of the
Mexican war, and afterward Governor of
Oregon and United States Senator, she
says, was her first cousin. She had two
children by Mr.. Walker. She sent them
to jena, Germany, because he was not
fit to be intrusted with the custody of
children. He had been married twice
before, and has children and grandchil-
dren by both his former wives, and fifty
odd step-children, step-grandchildren,
and step-great-grandchildren by his
second wife.
Mrs. Walker demands a divorce on
the ground of her husbands unfaithful-
ness, and asks that o commission of
lunacy issue against him. She charges
that he is moving and shifting his prop
erty in hostility to her, having already
transferred 100000 OF his estate from
California to New lork, the reason be-
ing that under the laws of California he
and she own everything in common,
share and share alike, and that her half
may descend to her heirs and not to his.
The pending action, she says, is strug
gle between three sets of heirs to cast
her aside, SO that they may obtain con-
troll of an estate of 100000. She asks
for permanent alimony of 100000 a
year, and for $15, 900 pending the suit.