Maj. Graham Responds to Wife's Demand for Allowance, Claim of Abandonment, Oct. 31, 1919

From The Daily Times, Wilson, N.C., Oct. 31, 1919. This story begins with a newspaper article published in this blog: 

http://ruralnchistory.blogspot.com/2019/10/maj-graham-says-wife-called-him-old.html.

Allowance Asked Too Much

Raleigh, N.C., Oct. 29—Insisting that the allowance asked for is out of all proportions to his income, Major W.A. Graham, Commissioner of Agriculture of North Carolina, has filed an answer, thru his attorneys, to the suit instituted by his wife, Mrs. Sallie Clark Graham, charging abandonment and asking for an allowance of $150 per month.

The answer sets forth a marriage contract, drawn up before the wedding by which the defendant agreed to pay the plaintiff $4,000 in consideration of which she should relinquish all rights to a dower in his estate. Full payment of this amount was made in February, 1918, it is claimed.

Dislike to his son, the answer asserts, developed to such a point that the plaintiff ordered him several times to leave the house and threatened to call a policeman.

On the evening of June 19, 1919, the defendant claims his son visited him at his home on matters of business. At that time, his wife, the plaintiff, became enraged, abused the defendant’s son and threatened to prosecute him if he did not leave. Moreover, the defendant contends, the plaintiff started into the house to telephone for a policeman and asked her sister to go across the street to to call a lawyer whom she had consulted. The lawyer did not come but the plaintiff accused the defendant’s son of insulting her by shaking his fist in her face. This was denied, and the plaintiff, according to the defendant, turned on him and declared, “You are an old gray-headed liar. Somebody ought to knock you down and I would do it for your gray head.”

The defendant then according to the answer, went to a hotel to allow his wife to quiet down. When he arrived at home at 5 o’clock the next afternoon, in compliance with a note which he addressed to her, he found his suitcase packed on the front porch and the door locked from the inside.

The defendant states that he has a salary of $3,500 a year from his office as Commissioner of Agriculture and a 500-acre farm valued at from $6,000 to $18,000 but non productive since the freshet of several years ago.