When last contacted a few years back, Mrs. Campbell was living at 705 Camden Drive, Beverly Hills, California. The two unmarried sons lived at the same address. Caroline, the daughter, was married to a Los Angeles banker, Leland T. Reeder, a son of the fiery and famous Congressman W. A. Reeder, from the sixth Kansas district, back in the nineties.
Idle mining properties, or mines worked only spasmodically by lessees, do not readily attract buyers, especially when filled with water, as in the case of the Campbell mine at Vanderbilt. Incredible as it may seem, there really is water deep down—in places—in that desert country, and it even rises sometimes. The shaft at our own mine, in the very heart of the desert, situated in a small depression on the mountain side, was once filled to overflowing during a heavy rain.
Other bequests, principally to relatives, also were contingent upon the sale of those two properties. And hope, tenacious hope, once bloomed so very brightly but now devoid of sparkle, still lingers with heirs around here.
Henry Campbell, a nephew, who was sheriff of Nemaha County for two terms about the turn of the century, with his two sisters, Mary and Frances, the son and daughters of John Campbell, all deceased now, were named jointly for $100,000. The surviving heirs are: Emma Swarm Campbell, wife of Henry, Bancroft, and two sons by a former marriage, living in the West; George Cordon, husband of Mary, Ontario; Ray Drake, son of Frances, Norton.
The heirs of Caroline Campbell, who married a Mr. Steele and went West, and the heirs of Sally Ann Campbell, who married Henry Stanley and lived near Circleville, were named jointly in the will for $100,000. William and Edward Stanley and Laura Hart, all dead now, were children of Sally Ann. William worked with his uncle in the mines and was named for an extra $100,000.
Two daughters of Green Stanley, another son of Sally Ann, are married to “Jack” and “Kid” Rudy, and live at Soldier. A daughter of Sally Ann—Julia Alice Stanley — married Albert D. Chamberlin, now living in Holton. Mrs. Chamberlin is dead. Her heirs are: Mrs. Lee Able, Holton; Mrs. S. B. Moody, Centralia; Mrs. Ernest Hogg, Payette, Idaho; Mrs. Mary Gaston and Nathaniel Chamberlin, Whitehall, Montana; and Charles Chamberlin, Salt Lake City.
One small payment was received by the heirs here about two years back, which revived interest in about the same degree of satisfaction as that of a sprinkle of rain to a thirsty earth. Time was, though, George Cordon tells me, when they could have accepted settlement at fifty cents on the dollar.
It is probable that the inheritance of Charley Campbell was tied up in this or by some other uncertain condition. Whatever the case, he settled with the estate for $50,000. Crediting rumor afloat at the time, it is my recollection that, in recognition of close—and perhaps menacing—kinship, this was paid with money left by Green Campbell to his second family.
Leaving an ex-wife and two sons, Allen and Robert, in the West, Charley Campbell later returned to Circleville. There, in 1920, he married Laura Deck. He is now living in or near Philadelphia.
His mother, Florence Campbell, did not marry again. She went to work. And by the irony of Fate she became a teacher of art in the college founded by her divorced husband, along about 1895. Later, years later, when I saw her last she seemed merely to be waiting, in emptiness and dead memories, for the end. She died in Pomona, California, about 1920.