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Constance:
Thanks for all of your work! I had scoured up some of that data during a trip to AZ about two yers ago but some is new and there is more yet to find!
Max was my grandfather, It turns out that he was so bad that he is fascinating.
You are correct that Max was married before Okie(and once after her , too!). However, the status of some of his at least five "wives" is questionable so I usually say "He was more or less married fives times (maybe more, or less). He left wife #1 in Ohio about 1901 with two young sons and moved to California. There he married my grandmother who was a divorcee herself (although they were the same age she trimmed fives years off of her age on her application for their marriage license). My dad was their only child.
Max got called up with the California National Guard in June of 1916 to chase Pancho Villa across the desert. After being in AZ he never returned to my grandmother in California. In 1918 he took out a marriage license (I think in Glendale?) to marry a Lilliam M. Metherell. Max never returned the completed marriage certificate so their marriage was not recorded (he probably did that in hopes of avoiding bigamy charges).In the 1920 census Max is listed as living in Winslow (literally on the wrong side of the tracks in an area for railroad workers called "the Kleindienst Extenstion")with Lillian with my dad (then age 11). However, my grandmother Peck in California simultaneously listed my dad as living with her so I don't know what was going on.
In 1922 Max filed for divorce from my grandmother (wife # 2, after leaving wife #3) charging her with abandonment. She ultimately collect $50 from him in settlement of her "marital rights". By then he had left Lillian to who he was never legally married. He probably filed because he wanted to marry Okie.
Okie and her sister were pioneer women in the desert (more about that below). A few years ago I had a very interesting exchange of emails with an American woman now married to a German and living outside of Berlin. Around 1910 when Okie was lovong in Ricardo, New Mexico she had a common law husband/ boyfriend who she lived with. They played a practical joke on the local woman railroad station master (it was a watering stop town) who was pregant at the time. She went over the edge in rage and shot and killed the boyfriend and shot Okie in the head (almost killed her - in a coma for a month). The woman in Germany's grandmother was the station master and she was tried for murder and attempted murder. She got off on the theory of "pregnancy induced insanity", spent some time in a mentaL hospital, and then lived a normal life. The woman in Germany has written a masucript about that incident and was kind enough to share it with me. I have wondered if Okie's cerebral hemmorhage was related to her being shot in 1910.
Okie was grandpa's soul mate since they both rode horses, shot guns, probably drank too much, etc. After she died he "married" (wedding location unknown)one more time to another woman only know as "Minerva". They were living in Tulsa when Max died under mysterious circumstances (gun accident?)on New Years Eve 1939. May have been suicide, maybe murder.
Okie and her sister were in AZ early on and allegedly owned large parcels of land around the site of the Arizona Biltmore. After Max died wife number 5 (Minerva, last name unknown) is reported to have gone back to Arizona to probabte his estate because he had inherited the land in Scottsdale from Okie. I still need to run doiwn that story and would appreciate any help you might suggest on getting the probate file. We are supposed to go to a wedding in AZ in March so maybe I can see it then.
Some more notes on Max. Okie in MAx lived in Florence at once time while he was working for the prision. My cousin thought he had been the warden (he may have told her that but I think he was probably the cooling system engineer). In Phoenix Max was the system engineer for the "Five Points" Ice House. The building is still there but is now something else. In Winslow he was a construction engineer for the railroad. In California he was a saleamn for a pump company (among other jobs). In Michigan and Ohio he had been an engineer, at one point working on the locks of the Maumee Canal (part of the Erie canal system?). Pur Peck line is from southern Pennsylvania.
So, what about your Peck family?
Best regards,
Bob
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