Los Angeles herald., 1910-09-01
News of the Courts
CHILD MARRIAGE GETS
TO THE DIVORCE COURT
Wife Charges WiIes Were Used to
Win Her and That HuS-
band Is Cruel

A child marriage; the loan of col
lar button, which was refused, and an
attempt at secrecy on the part of
Judge Dehy of Inyo county, sitting in
Judge Hutton's department of the su-
perior court, formed interesting phases
of the divorce action and cross com
plant of Carrie Pierson and Charles
D. Pierson respectively that was be-
gun yesterday.
Judge Dehy established a precedent
in the superior court of Los Angeles
county when he excluded the public
from the courtroom and permitted the
witnesses to remain. All of the regu-
lar jurists sitting in that tribunal
have held the view that secrecy in di-
Vorces tends to increase them and the
exclusion ordered has been only in re-
gard to witnesses and children, except
ing one, when Judge Hervey found that
he had been misinformed by the attor-
neys in the case and a very few min
utes after he had excluded the public
he ordered the doors to be reopened.
Mrs. Pierson brought the suit for
divorce on the ground of cruelty and
made lengthy story of her troubles In
the complaint, which presumably was
more than duplicated on the witness
stand, but only the officers of the
court and the witnesses know what she
told there. The cross complaint OF her
husband, wood and coal merchant,
also is on charges of cruelty
TELLS OF COURTSHP
In the complaint Mrs Pierson recites
incidents of her happy childhood at her
parents home at Martinsburg, w. Va,
where she said Pierson became ac-
quainted with her family. Shortly
after that he left for California, de-
claring his interest in them and asking
her elder sister to correspond with him
so that he could keep in touch with
them.
growing tired of the task turned it over
to the plaintiff, then only about II
years old. Soon, she alleges, Pierson
wrote her of the love he had formed
for her, and returning to West Vlr-
ginia. repeated his written assertions
vocally.
Mrs Pierson, at the time of his re-
turn was hardly more than 15 years
old, she says, and quite ignorant of the
ways Of the world and the wlles OF
designing men," She asserts that she
believed his protestations or adoratlon
and kept them secret from her parents,
at his request. He told her that ne
had been married before, she AYERS, but
had been granted a divorce from his
first wife in Fresno, Cal, and finally
obtained her conesent to act upon his
plan for their marriage.
Pierson took her to Hagerstown, Nd,
where she entered into a marriage
agreement with him, and with the aid
of a minister who made a speciality of
performing the marriage ceremony for
runaway couples, she became his wife
before she was 16 years old and when
she was unfamiliar with his age, which
she estimates at 80 at that time, which
was in 1898.
CLAIMED TO BE DIVORCED
They returned to Martinsburg to the
home of her parents Upon learning
of the secret marriage they caused the
arrest of Pierson on the charge of
bigamy.
Upon his showing, alleges Mrs. Pier
son, by means of a real or purported
telegram, that he had obtained a di-
vorce from his former wife he gained
his freedom.
Soon after this, continues Mrs. Pier
son in her complaint, Pierson decided
to come again to California, and say
ing that he had not enough money at
that time to pay the fares of two he
came alone, leaving her with her
parents.
Several months afterward. she as
serts, he returned to Martinsburg and
demanded that she cease to associate
with all of her childhood friends, ac-
cusing her of violating her marriage
vows
Rhen he brought her to California,
where she asserts that she learned he
had not obtained the divorce from
former wife as he alleges, and did not
do so until June, 1893, the same year in
which he married her She gives un-
pleasant details of their life in Central
California and in the San Joaquin val
ley, telling of moving here and there
and of her frequent illnesses. She be-
came the mother of two children, who
have been encouraged by their father,
she AYERS, to disobey her.
LIVE IN SUNLESS FLAT
She tells Of their life in Los Angeles
in "sunless fiat, bleak and cold and so
damp that the meager furniture it con-
tained nodded" She declares they
moved from that establishment only
when she took upon herself the respon-
sibility of renting another apartment.
AS instances of her husbands cruelty,
Mrs. Pierson tells of his frequent RACES,
unclean epithets applied to her, disre
gard of her when she was i'll and gen
eral unreasonableness.
Once, she details, in Fresno, in the
presence of a woman guest of hers,
Pierson asked his wife to loan him a
collar button, he either having lost or
misplaced his. She says she refused on
the ground that she needed it herself,
whereupon he is alleged to have flown
into terrible rage.
If the case continues at the rate it
went yesterday it will occupy the at
tention of Judge Dehy for several days.
----a-s-G~-
H~A-A-N ,AIF-r TsTHrh-rRtN