As if in preparation to carry out the educational phase of the court mandate handsomely, Green Campbell endowed a college right in the boy’s door-yard, so to speak. Work began on Campbell University at Holton in 1880, and the school opened on September 2, 1882, with Prof. J. H. Miller, president. For a small-town school it became quite noted. After a successful run of nearly a score of years, it fell into decay and finally ceased to exist. The old stone building standing on an eminence at the northwest corner of Holton, long in disuse as a college, was razed in 1931 to make room for a new $139,000 brick high school building.
It would be interesting in this connection to know what Green Campbell’s reactions really were, what motivated that splendid school? With a knowing smile on his weathered face and without amplifying his surprising assertion, Elwood Thomas once told me that had there been no divorce there would have been no Campbell University. And did the boy Charley actually “finish off” at Campbell University? I think not. A recent casual inquiry at Circleville told me nothing in that particular. While yet quite young, he married Kate McColough. He went West—and, backed by his father, tried his hand at mining at Providence, California, with little or no success.
With his marital differences adjusted in the divorce court, Green Campbell now, like as not, a morose misogynist, went back to his beloved golden West and in the immediate years which followed was as grim and silent, on one very ticklish subject, as the barren peaks of the mountains about him. In his mine, Mr. Campbell had encountered and conquered some extremely refractory ore. He had hauled in cord-wood from as far as sixty miles to roast that stubborn ore in outdoor fires, to make it amenable to the smelter. But in marriage, a bit of clay—he had no workable method for that.
Green Campbell came back to his old home only a few times after the separation. But Kansas still claimed him — claimed him until he went to Congress for Utah, claimed him until he sold his homestead here to Bill Hayden. He was Nemaha County’s first millionaire!
Green Campbell, first of all, was a miner. Close attention to business, as has been pointed out, brought him great riches—and a dilemma! The memory of this last named acquisition persisted, ghost-like, to haunt him for long years. But it did not haunt him for all time.
In the mining game, a hope never fades that another doesn’t bloom brightly in its place. Likewise, generally speaking, it is so in matters of the heart, only the flowering is not always so spontaneous. Sometimes, not infrequently, after the romantic love of other days has passed, the withering love-instinct must be carefully cultivated for years if it is to flower again.
Fourteen years and fourteen hundred miles lay between Green Campbell and the subject of his marital woes when at the age of sixty or thereabout, after he had reached the peak of his financial flight and experienced some setbacks, and after he had grown a fine flowing snow-white beard and become quite bald, it bloomed for him again.
This time the bride was Eleanor Young, a reporter on a Salt Lake City newspaper. She was a daughter-in-law of the famous old Brigham Young. And the stork, that industrious old bird of world-wide habitat, at home on the desert as in the oasis, brought the Campbell’s three fine children—Allen, Byram and Caroline.
Green Campbell would, of course, want to do something to perpetuate the school that bore his name. But in his will he made the fatal mistake—fatal for the school—of first taking care of his family with the more tangible assets. He bequeathed $100,000 to Campbell University, conditionally, however. It was to be paid out of the proceeds of two mining properties, namely, his Vanderbilt and Goodsprings holdings. A minimum price of $500,000 was placed on his Vanderbilt mine, and $200,000 on his Goodsprings claims, and they were not to be offered for less than the stipulated price for two years. The properties have not yet been sold. While really promising properties, with the future pledged, largely, by the terms of the will, there was no one to continue developments to make them bring the price. Green Campbell had expended something like a half million dollars in developing his gold mine at Vanderbilt.
Secure in the fortune left them, the Campbell heirs — Green’s second family—have risked no money in mining. Besides his various mining interests Green Campbell owned, at death, a magnificent home on Brockton Square, in Riverside, California; numerous tracts of California ranch lands, and real-estate holdings in downtown Los Angeles. Also, a substantial cash operating fund, and some income property in Salt Lake City—notably, the Dooley block. Mr. Campbell often expressed his faith in the future of Los Angeles. The fortune has largely been kept intact.