Richard Lord Hill, Jr. ca. 1900; likely taken in Corning, New York.
Why would a father leave his children?
In an age where divorce, particularly in New York State, was not only frowned upon but legally difficult to obtain, how did one man manage to leave his wife and four children, cross the country to the Pacific coast, and begin an entirely new life, with a new wife and more children?
In the sleeve of a blue folder, my father kept a photocopied clipping from the Corning Journal, dated Wednesday, March 12, 1902, in which appears this small story in the “City and Vicinity” column that seems innocuous:
R. L. Hill, Jr., left March 5th for San Buenaventura, California, where he has secured a position. San Buenaventura is on the Pacific coast, 83 miles north of Los Angeles.
Though this seems mundane enough, there is a lot to unpack here. First, “R. L. Hill, Jr.” is Richard Lord Hill, Jr., my great-great grandfather. His father Richard was a Civil War officer-turned-insurance adjuster, and Richard, Jr. was born on April 2, 1864 in Corning, New York (the first of what would be five generations born in that city, with me being the last, at least on my line following my father).
Second, Corning is in Upstate New York, and in 1902, California would have been at an incredible distance. The journey by train would have taken days, possibly close to a week, and cost the equivalent of thousands of dollars today. The town he arrived at we know as Ventura.
In the Ventura County Star-Free Press edition of Tuesday, July 1, 1947, I found the obituary for “Richard L. Hill, Venturan.” He is described as a watchmaker, employed by Bartlett’s jewelry store from 1904 to his retirement in 1936. He was survived by his wife Hattie and their three sons and daughter. There was to be a rosary recital, and a funeral held in the Old Mission. He was buried in Ivy Lawn. The obituary makes a passing mention that he was from Corning, New York.
Hattie, though, is not my great-great-grandmother. That was Emily Knox, who Richard Lord Hill, Jr. apparently left behind in Corning, along with their children, to move to California, where he remarried and had more children. My great-grandfather, Richard Hill III, is not mentioned in the Ventura obituary, and in fact there is no mention of a family in New York at all.
The question here is, at the very least, what happened?
Emily Knox White (later Hill). Date unknown; likely taken in Corning, New York
Emily Knox White was born on the third of June, 1861 in the town of Knoxville, Pennsylvania, named for the ancestors of her mother, Dolly Knox, a family that first came into the region in 1798 and settled along the banks of the Cowanesque River, establishing a farm.
Dolly’s father died when she was only thirteen, and her mother died three years later. What she did for the next sixteen years is unclear, but in the late summer of 1850 she married John Erastus White as his second wife. Emily was their youngest child.
Corning is about thirty miles from Knoxville, and the railroad linked them. I imagine Emily might have gone by train to Corning for any number of reasons: for the markets, or for social events, or simply to establish a life there. Somewhere in the course of those visits, she must have met Richard. I’ve no idea when that might have been, and I don’t know yet when they married, though it must have been prior to September of 1889, when their first daughter was born.
Over the next decade, they would have four children. Their only son, Richard Hill III, was born May 19, 1894. He would have been just shy of eight years old when it was reported that his father was leaving for the West. I try to imagine what this must have meant to the boy.
Richard Hill III died when my own father was only eight, and at any rate, I can’t ask my father about it anymore—my father died nearly ten years ago,
My uncle Dick—Richard Hill V—told me that there are letters that Richard II wrote to his children. I would need to look closer.
Since 1787, New York state had a fault-based divorce law. It was difficult to get a divorce; it meant one spouse had to prove the other was at fault, and adultery constituted the only grounds. Adultery was, however, difficult to prove, with evidence tough to garner. Divorce, rooted as it was in adultery, was frowned upon, to say the least.
I can’t offer any answers here as to what may have happened, at least not yet. But given the time, 1902, it seems like it would make no difference as to whether someone like Richard married in California—how would that state know anything of his past life, really? He was under no obligation to share the details of his past.
It’s clear that Emily retained custody of the children—they lived their lives in New York and are each buried there, or so my research shows. Perhaps her husband Richard was in some way at fault. Perhaps they never divorced, and he simply left, meaning he deserted her, but this seems unlikely, especially considering that his leaving was reported in the newspaper. His father, Richard Lord Hill, was a man of renown in the town, a hero of the Civil War and a respected citizen, so such a scandal would have been unwelcome, and certainly by Emily. What Victorian mores would have lingered would have shamed her for certain.
There were so-called “divorce mills,” states where couples could go to evade the New York law and have their marriages severed. Indiana was the first state to be known as a divorce mill, though unless a couple had the finances to travel (and in some states even establish residency for a time), this was probably out of reach. To travel to such places to dissolve a marriage was called a migratory divorce. It is possible Richard and Emily divorced in Pennsylvania, as their laws were different.
I learned that divorce records are not considered vital—not like birth, marriage, or death certificates. They are, as well, sealed for 100 years. As of this writing, I reached out to the Steuben County Clerk, but I will have to write a letter, sign it, and have it notarized as well. What I hope to retrieve is information about the divorce, what the underlying reason was. Perhaps it was merely annulled, but after at least a decade, that seems unlikely.
Interestingly, in the same clipping of the Corning Leader my father kept, there is this bit of news:
At a special term of Supreme Court at Bath on Saturday, March 8th, 1902, on motion of Leslie W. Wellington, Attorney for the Plaintiff, Judge Parkhurst directed a decree of divorce, absolute, for Charles B. Smith from Fanny B. Smith, his wife. The parties formerly resided at Bath where Mr. Smith conducted a meat market. He now resides in Gibson, Town of Corning.
So divorce was possible, even in a small town like Bath. What actually happened in the marriage, though, is a mystery. And what happened in my great-great-grandparents marriage will remain so, as well.