Evening star., 1932-04-24

Mrs. Lille LugenbeeI Christincy.
highest judicial tribunal in the land are open
to her, where her claim will be fairly and
impartially heard and considered and the
wrongs she has suffered be fully redressed. To
this tribunal and this result we look with every
confidence.
1T is a source of regret that the associate
judges who tried this issue should have signed,
sealed and enrolled exception after the
plaintiffs evidence in chief was closed, stating
that she had given evidence by various facts
and circumstances tending to prove that she
was lawfully married to the defendants in
testate, John P. Van Ness, at Philadelphia, in
the State of Pennsylvania, the 9Th day of
August, 1845, instead of then stating, as they
did after all the evidence closed in the
form of an instruction to the jury, that upon
the whole evidence aforesaid, if the same shall
be believed by the jury to be true. there is no
evidence from which the jury can find that the
said petitioner (plaintiff) was lawfully married
to the said John P. Van Ness in his lifetime, :"
etc.
by this course nearly one months waste Of
time and labor would have been saved, as we'll
an enormous and runous amount of cost,
both to the United States and the plaintiff
upon whom they are cast-to say nothing Of
character as well OF the parties as of witnesses,
that would In this case have been protected
from unnecessary and painful animadversion.
The court withdrew the facts from the jury
and decided them. By the unprecedented act
the associate judges have, in opinion,
overstepped all legal and constitutional bound
aries and usurped the powers of the jury.
BRENT & MAN.
Washington, D. c.
December 81, 1846."
For the special benefit of the present gen.
Grafton who might have had an ancestor on
this jury, the record states that those voting
to sustain the marriage were Messrs. Jones,
Craig, Peter Hepburn, J. Hepburn, Triplett.
Easily and Bird while those voting not to sus-
tain it included Messrs Orme Storm Stewart,
Suter and Trunnel.
When the case reached the Supreme Court
of the United States to which it was appealed,
this court denied it consideration for want Of
jurisdiction. However, this did not prevent
Mrs. Connor from adopting the name of Van
Ness. which she did-according to the city
directory-subsequent to 1886, when we find her
name given as MRS. Connor," and her business
and address as: Boarding house, n. side Mo.
av. btw. Az and W.
A MOTHER celebrated case which had, in
deed, a really sad ending the Chris
tiancy divorce proceedings
This was another one of those cases, of which
there have been many thousands where an
old man married o very young woman, and
where-unlike the Bodisco- Williams case, so
often referred to-it ended disastrously for
both.
In 1875, Isaac Peckham Christiancy came to
Washington as United States Senator from
Michigan.
Like many of our national characters, his
early life was an uphill proposition. He was
born March 2, 1912, IN Johnstown, Montgomery
County, N. Y, and was the son of poor,
hard-working farmer, who met with serious
accident when his son was about IL years old.
disabling him for the rest of his life. Conse-
quently, the support of the family devolved
largely upon young Christiancy, who worked at
farming, numbering and whatever work he
could get to do. IN the meantime acquiring
ter months. BY close application to his studies
he was finally deemed competent to teach
school and was thus engaged from the age Of
18 until he was II. After moving to Ovid,
Seneca County, he attended the academy Of
that place and later studied law, and in 1886
moved to Michigan, where he held a number
of State offices before being elected to Con-
gress in 1875.
At the time MIR. Christiancy came to WASH
ington he was a widower with six sons and one
daughter. However, it was not long there
after before he wooed and wen the heart and
hand of Miss Lille Lugenbeel, Treasury De-
partment clerk just A years his junior and the
niece of Col. Pinkney Lugenbeel, U. S. A.
Whether there was even brief period OF
happiness in their married life no but the
ever, it was learned that there was rift be-