Patience is a virtue, or so they say, but in the case of Lucy Mae Maupin, who waited 17 years to marry Richard A. Marsden, a little prudence might have served her better.
Maupin wasted no time, however, when she found out Marsden had married another woman and filed a lawsuit against him July 24, 1909, alleging a breach of promise. She sued him for $15,000 or $1,000 a year for every year from the day they had set as their wedding date, according to an article in the Kansas City Times, dated July 25, 1909.
Maupin, the daughter of Anna (Smith) and Edward Maupin, a farmer and a stock raiser, was born in Eureka, March 29, 1869, and moved to Hillsboro when her father purchased a 307-acre farm in the area, according to The History of Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, Crawford and Gasconade Counties by Goodspeed Publishing.
It is in Hillsboro, it is presumed, she met Marsden, who was born in Hillsboro, Feb. 18, 1863, the son of native Englishman Richard Marsden and his wife Elizabeth (Shelton), a Missouri girl.
“I had known Dick Marsden about three years and we had been good friends,” Maupin told a reporter for the Kansas City Times article. “Then he asked me to marry him. We became engaged June 14, 1892.”
If Maupin’s accusations are true, she was a young woman, just 23, when 29-year-old Marsden popped the question.
“He had no regular occupation at that time, and he told me he expected to run for county recorder of deeds in November 1894,” Maupin said, according to the article. “He intended to run on the Democratic ticket and felt sure of being elected, he said, telling me that when he had the office he would be in a position to take care of a wife.
“I told him I would wait willingly. He got angry at the Democrats, though, and became a Republican before the time when he was to have run for office.”
At the time the couple made their promises, Maupin’s future rival, Edna Matilda “Tillie” Ziske of Horine, had not even set off for her first day of school. The only daughter of William and Josephine (Walz) Ziske, she was just 4 years old when Maupin and Marsden were engaged.
Marsden married Tillie on June 1, 1909. He was 46. She was 21.
Marsden, who was the postmaster of Hillsboro at the time, denied that he was engaged to marry Maupin when he married Ziske, the article said.
Maupin, however, turned over a package of letters he had written her since she moved to Valley Park seven years earlier.
“Last spring, when I was house cleaning, I burned up a lot of letters he had written to me, but I kept a lot, too, for I had many,” she said, according to the article.
Maupin said she never doubted his intentions.
“Nobody ever had more faith in another person than I had in Mr. Marsden,” she said. “The knowledge that he had married another girl after keeping me waiting for seventeen years was the greatest shock of my life.”
Marsden’s marriage to Ziske apparently ended the correspondence.
“He has not written to me or communicated with me since the marriage, nor have I with him,” Maupin said, according to the article.
“Miss Maupin refused to say whether her motive in filing suit was to punish Marsden or whether she thought that she should have some recompense for her seventeen years of waiting,” the article said.
Marsden and Ziske had twin boys, Lloyd and William, in 1910. Marsden served as postmaster until 1914. He also had a store and a farm along the Big River, according to his death certificate.
Although they never married, Maupin and Marsden are sharing an eternity together, along with Ziske. All three are buried in the Hillsboro Cemetery. Marsden died at the age of 81, Aug. 29, 1944, after breaking his hip in a fall, according to his death certificate.
Maupin, who later married Henry Junge, died at the age of 88, on April 13, 1957, from cardio vascular disease at her residence at the Mountain View Nursing Home in Festus, according to her death certificate. Ziske died of “respiratory arrest” on Feb. 23, 1972, according to funeral home records gathered by the Jefferson County Historical Society.
The settlement of the breach of promise case is unknown. Jefferson County records kept in the history department of the Jefferson College Library did not have a record of the case, but records from that era are not complete.
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