EVA'S MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE: THE TOUR: ~INTRODUCTION~---the list of tour stops---other links---site navigation
Here's what I have about Eva's marriage and divorce. Most of it (except for family attitudes towards education) is from the stops in the Tour, and where it doesn't come from the Tour stops, I've said so.
Eva was the only one of the three Stokey sisters to get married, and as far as I can tell, the only one who ever showed an interest in doing so. There doesn't seem to have been any pressure within the family upon the girls to get married. I find no hints in the letters that anybody is interested in finding out if the girls had a man in their lives. And there was clearly an assumption that the girls would be educated and have a career. Papa Charles behaved very badly to his family, but I can't see any sign that he had any expectations that his daughters would behave like submissive, motherly females. Mama Margaret loved her children and certainly welcomed her children's spouses and her grandchildren, but she accepted them for who they were, married or unmarried.
Eva apparently accepted that she was expected to have a career of some sort; we have a poem that she wrote in 1903 at age eighteen about her search for a career path. It's light-hearted, but it's there. Clearly Alma always knew that she wanted to study botany and Laura always knew that she wanted to do something in the medical profession. Eva always loved music, but in another family she might not have chosen to pursue a career in it.
But the outside world would have expected Eva to marry, and that idea certainly interested her as well. When Will was assigned by the army to the Philippines in 1903, Eva asked for some Filipino fabric (jusi) that, according to what she read in a magazine, would make a nice wedding dress...just in case she wanted to get married all of a sudden. She followed up on the request a few months later, in a 1904 letter.
When Alma graduated from Oberlin in 1904, Eva went for the festivities, and had a lovely time falling in love with all sorts of men there, old and young. In 1906, Alma reported to Will, with amusement, that Eva was behaving rather inappropriately with a young man - holding onto his hand! If Eva had been in another family, surely more would have come of this interest in males, but Eva was a Stokey, so while her family members were around, she pursued her musical education.
In 1908, when Alma went to Massachusetts to teach at Mount Holyoke College, Eva moved to New York for further singing studies. Mama Margaret was there with her a lot of the time, and in April of 1909 Mama Margaret noted that a young man had become smitten with her at first sight. That was Frank, a rather shy tenor in his mid-thirties. He gave Eva flowers (carnations) and a book of poems (Browning) for her birthday in April.
Then Mama Margaret was called away. Her sister Mary in Michigan was dying. Mama Margaret didn't make it to Michigan before Mary's death, but she was there in time for the funeral, and then she spent some time with Fred, who was studying medicine in Michigan. By the time Mama Margaret returned, shy Frank had mustered up his courage and proposed to Eva, and she had accepted, noting to her family in his favor that he was so much like Will!
The family was surprised, but accepting. Alma, firmly established in her career as a botanist, expressed enthusiastic approval. Fred was curious from afar. Laura took action, getting a friend of hers from her days in osteopath school to check up on Frank. Frank came to visit Mama Margaret, Alma, and Eva when they were in a summer house that Alma had rented for them on Cape Cod. Will also came to visit them there, but not at the same time as Frank, so he called on Frank in New York.
Eva was apparently a little nervous about succeeding in this new future that was opening up for her, so she consulted with Will - of course! - about how to go about it. Or anyway, that's my interpretation of the conversation that Eva told Mama Margaret about, in which Will told Eva that their mother had a good disposition. I figure Will told Eva, "If you take Mama as your guide, you will surely have a good marriage." Never mind the fact that their mother's marriage had ended in divorce; everybody knew that their father was completely at fault. (And I'm not disputing that.)
In South Hadley, Mama Margaret, Alma, and Eva worked together to put together a trousseau for Eva. The wedding took place on October 16, 1909, in New York, according to Barbara's genealogy. Both Evanses and Stokeys (though not all of the Stokeys) attended.
Mama Margaret and Alma visited Eva and Frank in New York at Christmas, and, according to Mama Margaret, Eva and Frank were blissfully happy. Eva was keeping house, with some help from Frank, while both of them studied music.
And then...no mention of Frank. Nothing in 1910. Just nothing. Nothing from Mama Margaret about how happy Eva and Frank were. Nobody asking after Frank. Nothing.
So, in 1910, the marriage was going sour, and nobody was talking about it. Or if they were, the letters were thrown out.
What went wrong? There's nothing in the letters to say, but I have some bits of family lore to help. The first came when I was a child: Aunt Eva mentioned Frank Evans. Just once, sometime in the 1960s. She said Frank Evans was not generous with money the way Will was. She said it to me. I'm pretty sure no one else was around at the time, and I have no idea why she said it.
The second bit comes from AG, who reports a snippet of a poem in the family that her father, Fred, told her about. I think that Fred was the writer of the poem:
F is for faithful friend Frank:
His wife washed his clothes and they shrank.
And I think Barbara said to me that she understood that Frank wanted children and Eva didn't.
So, we've got Frank, raised solidly in the Victorian era and not in the Stokey family, falling for a pretty face and a pretty voice, proposing to Eva as soon as he could work up the courage, and not stopping to think: "I wonder if she wants what I want." He wanted a nice little wife who would cook his meals, clean his house, and raise his children. Eva hated housekeeping duties and didn't want children. She loved her music, and wanted to continue with it.
There would have been friction there, but Eva was stubborn: stubborn about getting her way in continuing her singing, but she would also have been stubborn about trying to keep her marriage together. She wasn't happy about it; Will's wife Margaret said in 1911 that Will was disturbed when Eva was unhappy, so Eva must have been talking about her troubles in a letter that didn't survive. Or maybe it was just, "I wish my marriage were as happy as yours." Will and Margaret were married in 1911 and were thoroughly happy together until Margaret's death in 1912. It surely was painful to Eva that her marriage was floundering while her brother's marriage flourished.
Then, in March of 1912, there was a blow-up between Eva and Frank. Eva wrote to Will and Margaret about it. But what was it about? Eva's letter is not available; all we have is Will's and Margaret's response. Will notes that Frank was not violent to Eva, but Will was worried that Frank would try to cheat Eva financially.
We know that a year later Frank had a job that involved him being away a lot. He continued working as a singer after the divorce, so it seems plausible that the job was a singing job, maybe with an travelling company of some sort. Maybe he first got wind of the opportunity in March 1912. Maybe part of the deal was that he was to invest in the travelling company, and he wanted Eva to contribute her own money.
This is pure speculation. But it makes sense to me.
Whatever the story, it was serious enough so that Will went to the library (in San Francisco, where he and Margaret lived) to research New York divorce laws.
Nine days later Will and Margaret learned that Eva and Frank had patched things up, apparently with Alma's help. How did that work? We know that Eva moved down to Philadelphia the following fall, and, as previously noted, that Frank got a job that took him away from home. Alma had musical friends, Mabel and Lil, in Philadelphia, and perhaps she enlisted their help to find a teaching job there, so that Eva would be self-supporting, with income indisputably her own while Frank was on the road. Maybe.
So we have Eva moving down to Philadelphia, but still stubbornly hoping to keep her marriage together. Will suggested in December of 1912, after Margaret's death, that it might help her marriage if she became Christian Scientist, because that had been good for his and Margaret's marriage. Eva took her brother's advice and looked into it, and talked to Mama Margaret about it, as we know from Mama Margaret's letter in late 1913. Eva did convert to Christian Science, and remained a firm, stubborn adherent of it all her life. Frank probably came home to Eva less and less often, and I can't help wondering if Eva's Christian Science talk became another reason for him to stay away. All Eva's stubbornness would be futile if Frank just wasn't there.
In the 1915, Eva was still living and teaching in Philadelphia, and still legally married to Frank. Mama Margaret was living with Will in Savannah, Georgia, keeping house for him and taking care of his toddler daughter. Mama Margaret wanted to go to California with Alma for the summer, so Eva came down and took over housekeeping and child care duties while Mama Margaret was gone. Obviously Frank was no longer visiting her. For her beloved brother Will, Eva was willing to do what she had been unwilling to do for Frank. But then, Will was more generous with money than Frank was. There was always a maid for the Savannah house; I never see a mention of one in the Evans household.
During that summer when Eva was in Savannah, Will was thinking about remarrying, and he discussed it with Eva. She vetoed his first choice for a second marriage, but that's another story. I wonder if Will and Eva also discussed Eva's marriage. Will was probably worried about the financial risk to Eva of her remaining married.
Eva divorced Frank in April 1916. I don't know how long it took for the case to go through the courts; it may have been started the previous fall.
Frank remarried a couple of years after the divorce, in early 1918. Since there were no children of Eva's and Frank's marriage, there was no reason for them to see each other ever again.
Eva kept Frank's name. She was Eva Stokey Evans for the rest of her life. My understanding was that she was proud of the fact that, unlike her sisters, she had at least married, even though the marriage didn't last.
Eva was the only one of the three Stokey sisters to get married, and as far as I can tell, the only one who ever showed an interest in doing so. There doesn't seem to have been any pressure within the family upon the girls to get married. I find no hints in the letters that anybody is interested in finding out if the girls had a man in their lives. And there was clearly an assumption that the girls would be educated and have a career. Papa Charles behaved very badly to his family, but I can't see any sign that he had any expectations that his daughters would behave like submissive, motherly females. Mama Margaret loved her children and certainly welcomed her children's spouses and her grandchildren, but she accepted them for who they were, married or unmarried.
Eva apparently accepted that she was expected to have a career of some sort; we have a poem that she wrote in 1903 at age eighteen about her search for a career path. It's light-hearted, but it's there. Clearly Alma always knew that she wanted to study botany and Laura always knew that she wanted to do something in the medical profession. Eva always loved music, but in another family she might not have chosen to pursue a career in it.
But the outside world would have expected Eva to marry, and that idea certainly interested her as well. When Will was assigned by the army to the Philippines in 1903, Eva asked for some Filipino fabric (jusi) that, according to what she read in a magazine, would make a nice wedding dress...just in case she wanted to get married all of a sudden. She followed up on the request a few months later, in a 1904 letter.
When Alma graduated from Oberlin in 1904, Eva went for the festivities, and had a lovely time falling in love with all sorts of men there, old and young. In 1906, Alma reported to Will, with amusement, that Eva was behaving rather inappropriately with a young man - holding onto his hand! If Eva had been in another family, surely more would have come of this interest in males, but Eva was a Stokey, so while her family members were around, she pursued her musical education.
In 1908, when Alma went to Massachusetts to teach at Mount Holyoke College, Eva moved to New York for further singing studies. Mama Margaret was there with her a lot of the time, and in April of 1909 Mama Margaret noted that a young man had become smitten with her at first sight. That was Frank, a rather shy tenor in his mid-thirties. He gave Eva flowers (carnations) and a book of poems (Browning) for her birthday in April.
Then Mama Margaret was called away. Her sister Mary in Michigan was dying. Mama Margaret didn't make it to Michigan before Mary's death, but she was there in time for the funeral, and then she spent some time with Fred, who was studying medicine in Michigan. By the time Mama Margaret returned, shy Frank had mustered up his courage and proposed to Eva, and she had accepted, noting to her family in his favor that he was so much like Will!
The family was surprised, but accepting. Alma, firmly established in her career as a botanist, expressed enthusiastic approval. Fred was curious from afar. Laura took action, getting a friend of hers from her days in osteopath school to check up on Frank. Frank came to visit Mama Margaret, Alma, and Eva when they were in a summer house that Alma had rented for them on Cape Cod. Will also came to visit them there, but not at the same time as Frank, so he called on Frank in New York.
Eva was apparently a little nervous about succeeding in this new future that was opening up for her, so she consulted with Will - of course! - about how to go about it. Or anyway, that's my interpretation of the conversation that Eva told Mama Margaret about, in which Will told Eva that their mother had a good disposition. I figure Will told Eva, "If you take Mama as your guide, you will surely have a good marriage." Never mind the fact that their mother's marriage had ended in divorce; everybody knew that their father was completely at fault. (And I'm not disputing that.)
In South Hadley, Mama Margaret, Alma, and Eva worked together to put together a trousseau for Eva. The wedding took place on October 16, 1909, in New York, according to Barbara's genealogy. Both Evanses and Stokeys (though not all of the Stokeys) attended.
Mama Margaret and Alma visited Eva and Frank in New York at Christmas, and, according to Mama Margaret, Eva and Frank were blissfully happy. Eva was keeping house, with some help from Frank, while both of them studied music.
And then...no mention of Frank. Nothing in 1910. Just nothing. Nothing from Mama Margaret about how happy Eva and Frank were. Nobody asking after Frank. Nothing.
So, in 1910, the marriage was going sour, and nobody was talking about it. Or if they were, the letters were thrown out.
What went wrong? There's nothing in the letters to say, but I have some bits of family lore to help. The first came when I was a child: Aunt Eva mentioned Frank Evans. Just once, sometime in the 1960s. She said Frank Evans was not generous with money the way Will was. She said it to me. I'm pretty sure no one else was around at the time, and I have no idea why she said it.
The second bit comes from AG, who reports a snippet of a poem in the family that her father, Fred, told her about. I think that Fred was the writer of the poem:
F is for faithful friend Frank:
His wife washed his clothes and they shrank.
And I think Barbara said to me that she understood that Frank wanted children and Eva didn't.
So, we've got Frank, raised solidly in the Victorian era and not in the Stokey family, falling for a pretty face and a pretty voice, proposing to Eva as soon as he could work up the courage, and not stopping to think: "I wonder if she wants what I want." He wanted a nice little wife who would cook his meals, clean his house, and raise his children. Eva hated housekeeping duties and didn't want children. She loved her music, and wanted to continue with it.
There would have been friction there, but Eva was stubborn: stubborn about getting her way in continuing her singing, but she would also have been stubborn about trying to keep her marriage together. She wasn't happy about it; Will's wife Margaret said in 1911 that Will was disturbed when Eva was unhappy, so Eva must have been talking about her troubles in a letter that didn't survive. Or maybe it was just, "I wish my marriage were as happy as yours." Will and Margaret were married in 1911 and were thoroughly happy together until Margaret's death in 1912. It surely was painful to Eva that her marriage was floundering while her brother's marriage flourished.
Then, in March of 1912, there was a blow-up between Eva and Frank. Eva wrote to Will and Margaret about it. But what was it about? Eva's letter is not available; all we have is Will's and Margaret's response. Will notes that Frank was not violent to Eva, but Will was worried that Frank would try to cheat Eva financially.
We know that a year later Frank had a job that involved him being away a lot. He continued working as a singer after the divorce, so it seems plausible that the job was a singing job, maybe with an travelling company of some sort. Maybe he first got wind of the opportunity in March 1912. Maybe part of the deal was that he was to invest in the travelling company, and he wanted Eva to contribute her own money.
This is pure speculation. But it makes sense to me.
Whatever the story, it was serious enough so that Will went to the library (in San Francisco, where he and Margaret lived) to research New York divorce laws.
Nine days later Will and Margaret learned that Eva and Frank had patched things up, apparently with Alma's help. How did that work? We know that Eva moved down to Philadelphia the following fall, and, as previously noted, that Frank got a job that took him away from home. Alma had musical friends, Mabel and Lil, in Philadelphia, and perhaps she enlisted their help to find a teaching job there, so that Eva would be self-supporting, with income indisputably her own while Frank was on the road. Maybe.
So we have Eva moving down to Philadelphia, but still stubbornly hoping to keep her marriage together. Will suggested in December of 1912, after Margaret's death, that it might help her marriage if she became Christian Scientist, because that had been good for his and Margaret's marriage. Eva took her brother's advice and looked into it, and talked to Mama Margaret about it, as we know from Mama Margaret's letter in late 1913. Eva did convert to Christian Science, and remained a firm, stubborn adherent of it all her life. Frank probably came home to Eva less and less often, and I can't help wondering if Eva's Christian Science talk became another reason for him to stay away. All Eva's stubbornness would be futile if Frank just wasn't there.
In the 1915, Eva was still living and teaching in Philadelphia, and still legally married to Frank. Mama Margaret was living with Will in Savannah, Georgia, keeping house for him and taking care of his toddler daughter. Mama Margaret wanted to go to California with Alma for the summer, so Eva came down and took over housekeeping and child care duties while Mama Margaret was gone. Obviously Frank was no longer visiting her. For her beloved brother Will, Eva was willing to do what she had been unwilling to do for Frank. But then, Will was more generous with money than Frank was. There was always a maid for the Savannah house; I never see a mention of one in the Evans household.
During that summer when Eva was in Savannah, Will was thinking about remarrying, and he discussed it with Eva. She vetoed his first choice for a second marriage, but that's another story. I wonder if Will and Eva also discussed Eva's marriage. Will was probably worried about the financial risk to Eva of her remaining married.
Eva divorced Frank in April 1916. I don't know how long it took for the case to go through the courts; it may have been started the previous fall.
Frank remarried a couple of years after the divorce, in early 1918. Since there were no children of Eva's and Frank's marriage, there was no reason for them to see each other ever again.
Eva kept Frank's name. She was Eva Stokey Evans for the rest of her life. My understanding was that she was proud of the fact that, unlike her sisters, she had at least married, even though the marriage didn't last.
EVA'S MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE: THE TOUR: ---introduction---~THE LIST OF TOUR STOPS~---other links---site navigation
- 1903-10-29 LETTER FROM EVA TO WILL --- Eva asks Will, in the Philippines, for some local fabric for a wedding dress, just in case she wants to get married sometime.
- 1903-12 POEM BY EVA --- Eva thinks about career possibilities.
- 1904-03-22 LETTER FROM EVA TO WILL --- Eva still wants that fabric for the wedding dress, just in case.
- 1904-06-30 LETTER FROM ALMA TO WILL --- Eva keeps falling in love. With several guys at once.
- 1906-03-13 LETTER FROM ALMA TO WILL --- Eva is rather forward with the young man. He doesn't mind.
- 1909-04-06 LETTER FROM MAMA MARGARET TO WILL --- In New York, Frank Evans meets Eva, and it's love at first sight, for Frank.
- 1909-04-26 LETTER FROM MAMA MARGARET TO WILL --- Mama Margaret is called away from Eva to her sister's deathbed (except she didn't get there in time) leaving Eva to her own devices.
- 1909-05-09 LETTER FROM MAMA MARGARET TO WILL --- Eva is engaged to Frank. A whirlwind courtship!
- 1909-06-24 LETTER FROM MAMA MARGARET TO WILL --- Mama Margaret, Alma, and Eva are at a summer rental on Cape Cod, and Frank is expected for a visit.
- 1909-09-20 LETTER FROM FRED TO WILL --- Laura and Will, separately, check up on Frank.
- 1909-09-23 LETTER FROM MAMA MARGARET TO WILL --- Mama Margaret, Alma, and Eva work on Eva's trousseau, and Eva tells Mama Margaret of a conversation about marriage that she had with Will.
- 1909-10-31 LETTER FROM MAMA MARGARET TO WILL --- Eva had a very nice wedding. Mama Margaret wonders if it was too nice, and Alma says there was nothing too good for their youngest.
- 1909-11-14 LETTER FROM MAMA MARGARET TO WILL --- Mama Margaret mentions that she had consulted on her medical issues with an Evans connection who was at the wedding.
- 1909-12-22 LETTER FROM MAMA MARGARET TO WILL --- Mama Margaret and Alma spend Christmas in New York with Eva and Frank. Eva is keeping house and pursuing her singing, and all is well.
- 1910-04-29 LETTER FROM MAMA MARGARET TO WILL --- Mama Margaret reports that Eva is pursuing her music. No mention of Frank or of Eva's housekeeping.
- 1910-10-18 LETTER FROM WILL TO MAMA MARGARET --- Will tells Mama Margaret of his engagement, and says that for the moment it is to be secret within the family - Alma, Fred, Laura, and Eva. No mention of Frank.
- 1911-04-27 LETTER FROM MAMA MARGARET TO WILL & MARGARET --- Mama Margaret has just finished a six-week visit to Eva. No mention of Frank.
- 1911-05-21 LETTER FROM WILL & MARGARET TO EVA --- No mention of Frank, but Margaret says Will is disturbed when she is unhappy.
- 1912-03-12 LETTER FROM WILL AND MARGARET TO EVA --- Eva has sent a request for help to Will because there has been a serious blow-up in her marriage. Will investigates New York divorce law.
- 1912-03-23 LETTER FROM MARGARET TO EVA --- Eva and Frank have patched things up for now, with the help of Alma.
- 1912-11-06 LETTER FROM MARGARET TO EVA --- Margaret is happy that Eva is happy. It looks as though this was when Eva moved to Philadelphia and started teaching.
- 1912-12-06 LETTER FROM WILL TO EVA --- Will suggests that it would help Eva's marriage if she became a Christian Scientist, and notes that Eva said she and Frank get along better when they see less of each other.
- 1913-04-28 LETTER FROM MAMA MARGARET TO EVA --- We learn that apparently Frank has some sort of job that keeps him away from home a lot.
- 1915-09-09 LETTER FROM MAMA MARGARET TO ALMA --- Eva keeps house for Will and takes care of Will's toddler daughter while Mama Margaret goes out west with Alma.
- 1918-02-03 NEWSPAPER ITEM ABOUT FRANK EVANS --- Frank remarries. It is noted that Eva divorced Frank in April 1916.
EVA'S MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE: THE TOUR: ---introduction---the list of tour stops---~OTHER LINKS~---site navigation
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