Marken Answers

Marken Answers

And Asks For a Divorce on His Own Account

In the divorce case of Mary Ann Marken vs. William Marken, of Lodi, defendant, today filed a cross bill in which he denied that he had been guilty of cruelty or that when he returned from the Grand Rapids fair he was cross and abusive and turned his wife out of doors. As he sets up the matter their troubles arose over their children by former marriages. The wife had three children by a former marriage aged from three to seven years, while he had two living at home, the youngest being 14. He says she at once found fault with his children and finally drove them away from home and that when, a year after their marriage, two of his daughters came from St. Johns to visit them, she called them bad names, refused to let them eat and drove them away. He also accuses her of striking him on the occasion of his return from the Grand Rapids fair and otherwise behaving so that he left for two days and when he returned found that she had gone taking the household furniture with her.