Windsor, Vermont, May 18—“She said I was scrawny, skinny and homely and a disgrace as a daughter-in-law.” A little girl with lonely eyes shaded by a floppy hat, drawled in a soft southern accent in federal court. Few in the crowded court-room knew her, but her words caused a sensation.
Fashionably garbed women rubbing elbows with farmers’ wives straightened and bent forward, then gazed at each other in astonishment. For the little girl, who was Mrs. Nellie R. Nelson of Lincolnton, N.C., was speaking of Kate W. Nelson, wife of Thomas R. Nelson, the millionaire slate king and social leader in the state of Vermont. The same little girl is the wife of the son of the proud Mrs. Nelson, Romelyn W. Nelson, noted Harvard athlete. She is suing her husband’s parents for $50,000 for alienation of her husband’s affections.
As the young Mrs. Nelson, a typical southern beauty, reared amid the picturesque Carolina hills, told the sad story of her short but hapless romance, the stern visaged country jury was visibly stirred, while even Judge Sterns wipes the tears form his eyes.
Married in Charlotte
It was a story of kaleidoscopic courtship, a secret marriage at Charlotte, N.C., a home made with her husband’s shocked and puritanical parents, the inevitable clash and the broken-hearted little wife’s final and pathetic return to her own silently suffering parents, back among the Carolina hills.
The young student married her in North Carolina in 1917, and a year later, she charged, ordered her out of his father’s home at Pawlet, because “you don’t suit the family.”
Mrs. Nelson, she charged on the witness stand, had been cruel to her, criticizing her continually, snubbing her and while in the slate king’s mansion making her life miserable.
“She told me that I was a great disappointment as a daughter-in-law,” said the girl. “When I cried she merely laughed sarcastically and walked away.” The young Mrs. Nelson said she met her husband first in her home town in North Carolina in 1913.
“He made ardent love to me,” she said. “When he came to a military camp in Charlotte in 1917 he renewed his wooing and proposed that we marry. ‘Mother will love you as much as I do,’ he said.
“I consented almost a year later to become his wife, and we wee married in Charlotte in 1918.
“He brought me to Vermont immediately and four months of my life was a hardship through the cold, cruel treatment I suffered from his parents. A few months after I had reached the house, Remeyn told me one day that I had ‘better pack up and go back home,’ that I didn’t suit his people.
“I left and never heard from him since.”
A letter which the young wife wrote her husband soon after she had returned to her southern home an just after he had started suit for divorce was the subject of a bitter legal tilt between opposing counsel. It was addressed to “Little Husband O’Mine,” and the girl bride wept continuously as she identified it. Decision on its admission was withheld until morning.
“I got down on my knees to him,” the sobbing girl told the jury, “and begged him to be on the square. I pleaded with him not to be like a serpent striking in the dark but to come out in the open and be a man. I knew he wanted to, but I guess his mind was not his own, for he loved the almighty dollar more than he did his wife.”
“Do you love your husband now, little girl?” queried Judge Sterns as he leaned forward over the bench as if to catch her reply.
“Yes, my husband, my husband,” she almost shouted, “and I love him with all my heart and soul.”
Then the flood gates opened, the little woman collapsed and the court adjourned.
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Windsor, Vermont, May 19—One of the most dramatic incidents ever witnessed in a Vermont courtroom occurred here this morning when John H. Rudisill of Lincolnton, N.C., father of Mrs. Nellie R. Nelson, faced Thomas S. Nelson of West Pawlet, Vermont, millionaire slate magnate and father of Romeyn Nelson, Harvard student and youthful husband of Nellie.
Mr. Rudisill was testifying in behalf of his daughter in the latter’s $50,000 alienation suit against Mr. and Mrs. Thomas S. Nelson. He had related the sorrowful homecoming of his daughter after her alleged ejection from the Nelson mansion after she had been “thrown out” as a “Homely squakky, uncouth girl.” He was detailing the treatment according his daughter at the hands of her husband’s parents, as she had related it to him, when a sudden interruption from Mr. Nelson Sr. came.
“Please allow me to state that never in my life have I ever spoken an unkind word to this little girl,” he stated, “and while I was surprised at the development of this trouble, I have been dumbfounded at the testimony, which I do not challenge, that has been rendered in this honorable court. My son, it seems, has made a confident of his mother at all times, it was something that never came to me, something that I never mixed in and I want to correct this gentleman’s impression as far as I am concerned here and now.”
Both Mrs. Romeyn Nelson and her father were visibly affected by the frank statement of the boy’s father and it is possible from the conference which the three later held that a settlement of the case may be reached and the trial stopped tomorrow. It has been common knowledge that the elder Nelson was not aware of the facts, especially of the treatment accorded the young North Carolina bride, until the trial opened.
The young couple who met and loved at Charlotte, never once glanced at each other today. The almost pitiful tale told by the little southern bride yesterday surely had its effect on the jury for today they watched her with kindly, fatherly interest.
The letter over which a bitter legal tilt occurred yesterday was admitted as evidence this morning, dealing a severe blow to the defense. It was written in Lincolnton, N.C., and reads in part as follows:
“Little Husband o’Mine: Again I am writing as I have written hundreds of times before. This time I’m sending two letters, one to your Pownall home and one to your Harvard address. If you don’t get one, you will surely get the other.
“Well, I’ve had some queer dreams about you lately. I have dreamed you were trying to divorce me. I have dreamed this so often that I have begun to feel it was true. Now I know it is.
“Just awhile ago a telegram came to a lawyer here asking him if he could handle a divorce case for a Mr. Marlborough of Vermont. I have since learned that Mr. Marlborough was you. You are suing me—your dear little wife—for divorce, and for desertion. Imagine it?
“You know your mother hated me. You know she didn’t want me there. You know you took me to New York and put me on the train to send me home. I wonder if you told your mother I paid my own way—that you didn’t have to spend your own money on me?
“Well, any time you want to communicate with me hereafter please do so under your right name—and not under any fictitious names.
“I’ll at least be courteous enough to answer. I guess the truth is you have been offered quite a sum to divorce me. Gee’, how you love and worship the almighty dollar.
“But hereafter don’t be so sneaky and lowdown as to use false names. Be on the square, if you can. Don’t be like a serpent striking in the dark. But then I guess your mind isn’t your own.”
Mrs. Nelson, weeping bitterly, was led from the courtroom as the letter was red, while her youthful husband has his face in his hands.
From the The Charlotte Observer, as reprinted on the front page of the Lincoln County News, Lincolnton, N.C., May 22, 1922
