In the year 1944, it is recorded in the divorce decree that the wife of E. F. has sustained "habitually cruel and inhuman treatment and adultery," thereby her husband E. F. will leave her and four underage children forever to fend for themselves.
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It is the Deep South, circa 1940, and in order to provide for his family, a man, E. F., must travel away from his small town to find work. In the construction industry, he would find work and his company would provide for its laborers, a room, and E. F. would live at a boarding house. There would be a woman, Kathryn, who would loiter around the construction site and she would take a liking to E. F. Before long, they were a couple, and the manager of the boarding house would take notice, and write a letter to E. F.'s wife telling her that her husband was keeping company, in that way, with this woman, Kathryn. At this time the family had three young children.
When this husband and father returned home on a break, the mother would try to save the marriage, in the way she thought important to E. F., and soon another child would be born. This child, the fourth born to this family, was a girl. But, two years later, it would be final, and the marriage officially ended in a divorce.
The divorce decree, only one page in length, would state that the wife of E. F. had sustained "habitually cruel and inhuman treatment and adultery, and that Complainant is entitled to a divorce from defendant." The Defendant was taxed with the costs in this cause. E. F. and Kathryn would marry shortly after the divorce, never having any children of their own, staying together until E. F.'s death when he would die of a fall from scaffolding.
The little girl would hardly know her father.
The relationship of the children to their father would not be totally estranged, but none of his descendants could relay any evidence that E. F. had satisfied his fatherly, monetary commitment to his children.
The eldest child, a boy, like a bat out of hell, by the time he was sixteen would leave home himself, looking for work, looking for something, traveling the United States. He would write letters to his mother for years and send back money and gifts occasionally. Eventually, he would marry at the age of twenty-one and coincidentally, also, have four children of his own. His marriage would last for over 60 years until his wife's death.
In the future, the little girl would marry, walking down the aisle, given away by her brother, Andrew. She would live a long life, married to the same man, enjoying her children and their descendants.
Upon the death of E. F., it would come out, the loyalty of especially one daughter to her father, of wanting to take care of him in his old age, but he died before this could happen. She would say "if mother had only taken him back," indicating an ongoing stress of a child longing for a relationship with her father. There would be some controversy as to who E. F. left his house to as Kathryn would have to serve the children with a legal document of permission to own the home she had lived in for decades.