I invite you to push play on the recording above and imagine life as it might have been in the 1900's. The Judge's oldest child and only daughter, Pauline, graduates from Howard Seminary with honors. The article in the Passaic newspaper says she will spend her summer at Kennebunkport, Maine. A few years later she marries a young and ambitious man, R.W.H. Campbell. The wedding is held in her family's home (now my home) in Kennebunkport.
While making her home in Rutherford, New Jersey, she and her husband, R.W.H. Campbell, a bank clerk, take part in a community production of the Gilbert and Sullivan Operetta Patience. Pauline (now known as Mrs. R.W.H. Campbell) is the star! She has a one-year -old daughter named Polly, a successful husband, and she is on stage in the new, impressive theater, The Criterion, singing the lead role in a popular operetta.
I imagine The Judge attended the production with pride.
Less than two months later, Pauline is taken ill.
Newspaper reports say she is at ill St. Mary's hospital.
She dies.
Little Polly, her one-year-old child, will not be raised by her father.
The Judge and Jessie, his first wife, have a new role to play......