Memory's Storehouse Unlocked, True Stories: Pioneer Days In Wetmore and Northeast Kansas — John Locke — John Shaqi
Memory's Storehouse Unlocked, True Stories: Pioneer Days In Wetmore and Northeast Kansas
John Locke · en
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.
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.