In the summer of 1890 Edith Fredenburg Klock and her husband Thomas Cady Klock (whom everyone called “Cade”) approached separate attorneys in Watertown to begin divorce proceedings against one another; she was 20 and he was 30. They had spent all of their married life living with Edith’s parents and siblings. In Edith’s suit she claimed that their marital problems resulted from her younger sister “causing trouble” between she and her husband.
Shortly thereafter the couple reconciled and went to live with Cade’s parents, George and Hannah Shuler Klock, in Three Mile Bay. They left their four-year-old son Earl in the care of Edith’s parents, James and Harriet “Hat” Hayes Fredenburg. The Fredenburgs lived in Limerick, where James was a blacksmith. In later testimony, Edith would say that she had only given Earl to her mother “in fun.” On January 29, 1891 Edith and Cade Klock went to Limerick to visit their son and the Fredenburgs. During the course of the evening, Edith began to argue with her father. James struck and began to choke her; Cade grabbed a horsewhip and whipped his father-in-law until he released Edith, then the Klocks fled the house. Late that night they returned to the Fredenburg house and, under cover of darkness, Edith slipped in, grabbed her child, and escaped in a cutter driven by her husband. (A cutter was a small sleigh.) The next morning Edith’s 17-year-old sister, Cora Fredenburg, organized a party of men to accompany her to Three Mile Bay to take the boy back. Walter Lynch (also variously called Lince or Lynde), 23, Byron Buchanan, 20, George Cook, 19, and Albert Liscomb, 20, gathered firearms and left Limerick in a sleigh with Cora. When they arrived, the entire party drew weapons on the Klock family, with Cora pointing her gun at her sister. Cora wrestled the boy away from Edith and took him back to Limerick with the group of men. The resulting court case was widely reported in the North Country and unflattering details about the family life were shared in testimony. The Fredenburg clan argued that the Klocks were impoverished and had no means to care for Earl. James Fredenburg also testified that Cade had complained on numerous occasions that he wasn’t even sure if Earl was his child. The Klocks countered that James Fredenburg was a drunkard. Mrs. Fredenburg’s mother, Susan Hayes, was called to the stand and testified that James did indeed drink, but always went home and went to bed if he got drunk. Hat Fredenburg insisted that her daughter had given Earl to her to raise as her own, so that Edith could take a job keeping house for her uncle Edgar Hayes in Chaumont, at $2 a week. In the end, the judge ruled that Edith was “a clean woman” and though “the father may not be all that could be desired,” the child should stay with his mother. Cora Fredenburg and her conspirators were found guilty and fined $25 each. Edith and Cade remained married and ultimately had 9 children together. Thomas Cade Klock died November 18, 1926. Edith married lake captain Perl Phelps in Chaumont on April 17, 1934. She died July 29, 1941 at age 72. Cora Fredenburg married her co-conspirator Byron Buchanan; eventually they made their home in Ellisburg. The Fredenburg sisters apparently were able to resolve their differences; later newspaper social records mention them paying one another visits. Earl Klock, the young boy whose custody was so bitterly contested, passed away in December 1974 at age 88. He is buried in the Dexter Cemetery.
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