Ada Maud Florence Solberg (née Hall)

Ada Maud Florence Hall was born in May 1875 to Lilian Helena Bruce and James Anderton Hall. She was baptised on 26 May 1878 in Roebourne, Western Australia.¹ She married Anton Solberg in Fremantle in 1893.²³ She died in 1942.

The Daily News, 18 May 1916:³

BREAKING THE BONDS

SOLBERG V. SOLBERG

WOMAN'S UNFORTUNATE EXPERIENCE.

Ada Maud Florence Solberg applied to Mr. Justice Booth in the Divorce Court this morning for the dissolution of her marriage with Anton Ludwig Solberg, a Norwegian sailor, on the ground of desertion.

Mr. F. J. H. Shaw appeared for the petitioner. The respondent did not appear.

Petitioner, in her evidence, said she was married to respondent at Fremantle in 1893. They lived in and about Fremantle for a couple of years, when her husband went to Fiji as a sailor, being away three years. He sent her no money, and she was compelled to earn her own living. While he was away he wrote her only one letter. On his return they went to Karridale, and lived there for 18 months, when a cousin of her husband's, who was captain of a sailing ship, then in Fremantle, offered him and his family a trip home to see his people. They went to Christiania, and a couple of months after arriving her husband took a timber contract. While they were in Norway the authorities asked her husband if he was going to reside in the country. He said no, as being a naturalised British subject he intended to return to Aus- tralia. The authorities later required her husband to undergo his military service, but he refused, repeating he was returning to Australia. Their first child was born in Australia, but a second was born in Norway. While she was in Norway she did not lead a very happy life, being a stranger in a strange land. Her hus- band also drank and gambled a lot, frequently starting on a Saturday afternoon and keeping it up until Monday morning. After being in Norway three years her husband said the climate was too severe for him after Australia, and desired to return. He had no money, and she secured the passage money for herself and eldest child from her people in Fremantle. Her husband had only sufficient money to pay his passage as far as Bremer- haven, saying he would ask the cap- tain of the boat they were on, the Stuttgart, to allow him to work his passage out. The captain, however, did not do so, and he told her to come on to Fremantle with the two children, and he would work his passage out by the next boat. She came out and had neither seen or heard from her husband since then, which was in June 1904.

Mr. Shaw said service of the citation had been made by substitution, the requisite advertisements having been inserted in the local press and a daily paper circulating in Christiania.

A decree nisi, returnable in six months, with the custody of the youngest child, was granted the petitioner.