Memory's Storehouse Unlocked, True Stories: Pioneer Days In Wetmore and Northeast Kansas
John Locke · en
No property settlement appears of record—leastwise my investigator does
not report any—though, I believe, there was a private settlement. Little
enough it was, no doubt, if any, but the disillusioned Mr. Campbell was
not niggardly with his money, as the plaintiff and her kin backers, and
all who listened in on the trial were soon to know.
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.