Campbell v. Christian, 17563
| Decision Date | 06 August 1959 |
| Docket Number | No. 17563,17563 |
| Citation | 110 S.E.2d 1,235 S.C. 102 |
| Court | South Carolina Supreme Court |
| Parties | Betty I. CAMPBELL, Appellant, v. Mrs. Cornelia Campbell CHRISTIAN, Mrs. Myrtis Campbell Williams, Mrs. Beulah Poole Campbell, James W. Campbell, Jr., Rowark Campbell, Claude Campbell, Hazel Campbell Clarke, Wayne Campbell, Sammie W. Campbell and Van Campbell and Mary Ellen Campbell, Both Infants over 14 Years of Age, Respondents. |
W. Harper Welborn, Anderson, for appellant.
S. Eugene Haley, E. Harry Agnew, Paul K. Rogers, Hood & Hood, Anderson, for respondents.
James Woodrow Campbell, a resident of Anderson County, died on February 25, 1956. His will dated September 9, 1947 was offered for probate in the Probate Court for that county and was there contested by the appellant, Betty I. Campbell, upon the ground that it had been revoked by her marriage with Campbell on July 17, 1954. The Judge of that court admitted it to probate and held that the said marriage was invalid because the respondent Beulah Poole Campbell was then decedent's common-law wife. Appeal was heard, by consent, before the Honorable J. B. Pruitt, Judge of the Tenth Circuit, upon the transcript of the Probate Court record; and from his decree of January 30, 1959, affirming the decree of the Probate Court, comes this appeal.
The case is at law, Harris v. Berry, 231 S.C. 201, 98 S.E.2d 251, and the single issue is one of fact, to wit: Were James Woodrow Campbell and Beulah Poole Campbell husband and wife on July 17, 1954? Our review of the circuit decree is limited to determination of whether or not there was any evidence to support it. Phillips v. DuBose, 223 S.C. 224, 75 S.E.2d 56; Seagle v. Montgomery, 227 S.C. 436, 88 S.E.2d 357.
Campbell was born on January 12, 1875, and was eighty-one years old at the time of his death in February, 1956. In February, 1894, when he was nineteen, his first child, Myrtis, was born to Emma Hickman, whom he never married. It should be said, in passing, that he supported Myrtis thereafter until her marriage in 1918, and that by his will, after provision for nine cash legacies aggregating $2,525, he left his residuary estate to her and his daughter Cornelia in equal shares and appointed both of them as executrices.
At some time prior to February, 1921, Campbell married Mattie Grey. They had no children.
While married to Mattie, Campbell had illicit relation with Beulah Poole, an illiterate, ignorant girl; and on November 18, 1921, she bore him a child. He was then forty-five, she fourteen.
On January 11, 1923, Mattie having died, Campbell married her niece, Gertrude. One child, Cornelia, was born to them on November 16, 1923. During this marriage, Campbell's relations with Beulah continued, with the result that she had two more children by him, one on January 28, 1925, the other on January 18, 1928. On December 10, 1927, he divorced Gertrude in a Flordia proceeding, the validity of which is not in issue.
About a year after the divorce, Beulah came into his home and took the name of Campbell, and they lived together for more than twenty-four years, during which five children were born to them, one in 1931, one in 1932, one in 1935, one in 1938, and one in 1943. In the spring of 1954 he deserted her and moved to another house in the city of Anderson.
Shortly thereafter the appellant, who had been living in Georgia, came to Anderson. In response to a newspaper advertisement she entered Campbell's employ as cook and housekeeper, and on June 10, 1954, they executed a written contract to that effect, which, after reciting her agreement, in consideration of $15 per week and board and lodging, 'to cook for J. Woodrow Campbell, keep his house clean, and attend to the washing and other household duties', proclaimed that 'she will occupy a separate room and she will be known as an employee of J. Woodrow Campbell', and that 'the relationship of employee and employer will be and is the only relationship which will exist between the parties thereto.' On July 17, 1954, they drove across the Georgia line and the Ordinary of Hart County performed a ceremony purporting to unite them in holy wedlock. He was then seventy-nine, she forty-two.
There is in the record before us considerable evidence that from the time that Campbell took Beulah into his home, a year or so after his divorce from Gertrude, he and she lived together as husband and wife, and that they were so recognized in the community. An elderly neighbor, who had known Campbell throughout the latter's life, testified that 'they lived openly as husband and wife'; that 'he carried the children around with him and they went by the name of Campbell and went to school under the name of Campbell'; and that the general public considered them as man and wife. One of Campbell's sons testified, without objection, that when strangers came to the house Campbell, after introducing himself, would introduce Beulah as his wife. His daughter Myrtis testified that during the many years that Campbell and Beulah lived together she visited in their home and understood that they were married; and that the people of the community knew them as man and wife.
In evidence are the birth certificates of five of the children, from which we note the following:
1. That of the child born November 18, 1921, names Beulah Poole as its mother, does not name its father, and states that the child's parents were not married.
2. That of the child born January 28, 1925, names James Woodrow Campbell as its father and Beulah Poole as its mother, and states that the child's parents were not married.
3. That of the child born January 18, 1928, names the parents as Woodrow Campbell and Beulah Campbell, and states that they are married.
4. That of the child born June 8, 1935, names the parents as Woodrow Campbell and Beulah Campbell, and states that they are married.
5. That of the child born July 3, 1943, names the parents as James Woodrow Campbell and Beulah Poole, and states that they are married.
Appellant, contending that Beulah's own testimony shows the relationship between her and Campbell to have been that of concubinage, not common-law marriage, points to the following portions of it:
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Throughout the record of this case Beulah appears as a woman illiterate, uneducated, and of childlike simplicity. It is not improbable that when she made the statements above quoted she was thinking of a ceremonial, rather than actual, marriage. Nor...
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