Elizabeth A. Abary died on July 13, 1981 at the Knox Retirement Center, Pompano Beach, Florida. Her remains are interred at St. Peter’s Evangelical and Reformed Cemetery, Tremont, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, in the family burial plot. On her grave marker her birth year is given as 1899, but more reliable records indicate that she was born on December 9, 1898, in Reilly Township, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, daughter of Joseph Abary Sr. and Edith Abary, both immigrants from Hungary.
According to an June 28, 1917, article in the Reading Times, Reading, Berks County, Pennsylvania, Elizabeth graduated from Keystone Normal School, Kutztown, Berks County, in 1917, the 50th anniversary class of the school. After graduation she is mentioned in news articles as a teacher in several Schuylkill County schools. Some time in the early 1920s, she ended up in Atlantic City, where she spent the remainder of her career as a teacher at the Central Junior High School.
From the Pottsville Republican, August 6, 1981:
ELIZABETH ABARY
Elizabeth Abary, 82, of 605 S. West Sixth Street, Pompano Beach, Florida, died July 13 [1981] at John Knox Retirement Center, Pompano Beach.
She was born in Blackwood, Reilly Township, a daughter of the late Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Abary Sr.
She was a member of St. John’s United Church of Christ, Zerbe.
Miss Abary was a graduate of Kutztown State College and did graduate work at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. She also attended the University of Moscow, USSR. She taught in the junior high school at Atlantic City, New Jersey, until retiring.
Surviving are two sisters, Mrs. Alfred Tobias, Tremont, and Miss Edith Abary, Bethany Village, Mechanicsburg.
Cremation took place in Pompano Beach, Florida. Graveside services were held this morning at Reformed Cemetery, Tremont. The Rev. George B. Carvell, St. John’s United Church of Christ, Zerbe, officiated. W. E. Minnig Funeral Home, Tremont, was in charge of local arrangements.
City directories for Atlantic City first show Elizabeth Abary as a resident and teacher in 1923. On October 11, 1924, she married Everett Longstreth Cope, who was the proprietor of the Wiltshire Hotel in Atlantic City and the couple took up residence there while Elizabeth continued to teach at the junior high. However, from 1931 to 1938, she was involved in a series of court battles involving a divorce with Cope.
In 1936, the divorce scandal broke in the newspapers.
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From the Morning Post, Camden, New Jersey, 13 February 1936:
Mrs. Elizabeth A. Cope, Atlantic City, asked for a divorce from her former husband, Everett L. Cope, manager of the Wiltshire Hotel, charging a divorce he obtained from her in Reno was illegal on the grounds that he was not a legal resident of Nevada at the time.
Mrs. Cope testified that she and her husband were married in Philadelphia October 11, 1924. on March 16, 1932, he was married to Edith P. Warren in California, after obtaining the Reno divorce, according to her testimony. Knight held the case under advisement pending a decision on similar cases before the New Jersey courts.
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From the Morning Call, Paterson, New Jersey, June 16, 1936:
WIFE HOLDS DIVORCE WRONGLY OBTAINED
Says Husband Got Reno Degree Fraudently; Seeks Freedom Herself
Atlantic City, June 18 [1936] — Charging that her husband obtained a Reno divorce by fraud, Mrs. Elizabeth A. Abary, 117 South Illinois Avenue, a teacher in the Atlantic City Junior High School, sought a divorce for herself and asked that the Reno divorce be set aside. The defendant is Everett L. Cope, manager of the Hotel Wilshire, who was remarried. Both are known in society here.
The hearing was continued until next Tuesday by William B. Knight, advisory master in chancery.
Mrs. Cope charged that her husband came to her in August 1931, at the Lafayette Hotel, where Cope was in love with another woman and could not give her up.
“I collapsed and became unconscious,” Mrs. Cope testified, “and when I regained consciousness he had packed his things and left.”
She charged he did not establish residence legally in Nevada and perpetrated a fraud on the courts there in representing himself as a legal resident. She said she was without funds and could not retain counsel or fight personally his divorce action in Nevada.
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From the Morning Call, Paterson, New Jersey, October 29, 1937:
RENO DIVORCE’S VALIDITY ON TRIAL IN HIGH COURTS
Trenton, October 28 [1937] (AP) — The question of whether an Atlantic City hotel operator, who obtained a divorce in Reno, holds the status of a single man in New Jersey was put today to the Court of Errors and Appeals.
Everett L. Cope of the Hotel Wiltshire, ‘through counsel, urged the court to set aside Chancery court decrees which invalidated his Nevada divorce and granted a divorce to his “wife,” Mrs. Elizabeth Abary Cope, also of Atlantic City.
Cope obtained his order of marital freedom in 1931, and married Pearl Maxson Warren in Los Angeles in 1932. Mrs. Cope was awarded her decree when Chancery Court held her husband was guilty of adultery by reason of his second marriage.
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From The News, Paterson, New Jersey, January 2, 1938:
Voids Divorce Decree
In voiding a New Jersey divorce granted Mrs. Elizabeth Cope of Atlantic City, the Errors Court validated a prior decree gained by her former husband at Reno, Nevada.
Everett L. Cope, Atlantic City hotelman, obtained his marital freedom at Reno in November 1931 and the following year married Pearl Maxson Warren in Los Angeles. He lived a while on the coast before returning to Atlantic City.
The first Mrs. Cope, whose original divorce suit was filed in October 1931, and was dismissed two years later, re-applied to Chancery Court in 1935. Chancery Court granted her petition and declared Cope’s Reno divorce voided.
In upsetting the Chancery Court order, Judge Frank T. Lloyd held the first Mrs. Cope acquiesced “for four years… in the legal termination of their marriage relations decreed by the Nevada divorce” before entering protest in 1935.
The first Mrs. Cope had argued the Nevada decree was invalid because her husband never gave up New Jersey as his legal residence.
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As can be seen from the series of articles, Elizabeth Abary was seeking to overturn the Reno divorce because when it occurred, she did not have the funds to fight it — and she had been told by her husband that he was leaving her for another woman. Elizabeth contended that the Reno divorce was invalid because her husband had lied to the Nevada authorities claiming he was a Nevada resident, when in fact he remained a New Jersey resident, while committing adultery with another woman.
Initially, Elizabeth Abary was able to get the Reno divorce invalidated and secured for herself a New Jersey divorce. But that was overturned in the Errors Court, thus making the Reno divorce valid, and Elizabeth’s divorce granted in New Jersey as invalid.
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News articles from Newspapers.com
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