The Scandal of the Navy Yard Font: A Love Triangle, a Divorce, and a Stolen Altar
In September 1876, Seattle was rocked by a domestic dispute between two prominent women that spilled into accusations of theft from the U.S. Navy Yard.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
JUNE WILLIAMS AND MRS. ROBINSON.
The following is from the Washington correspondence of the Hartford Times: "As Mrs. Robinson was the one attacked by Mrs. Williams she began to talk, and she told all her friends that Mrs. Williams had four husbands, and that her last husband (Mr. Williams) was the judge who divorced her from her next to-last husband, and that a year after he divorced the couple he married his wife (Mrs. Williams) himself. All of this turns out to be true, and it raised a row. Mrs. Williams struck back by charging that Mrs. Robeson had material stolen out of the Washington Navy Yard and worked up into a baptismal font and a large brass altar cross, which she afterward presented to her church at Monmouth Beach, New Jersey."
This 1876 gossip column reveals how quickly personal scandals involving women in the Pacific Northwest could become public fodder, blending domestic drama with accusations of federal theft. It highlights the interconnectedness of Seattle's early social elite and the Navy Yard, where local residents had access to military resources that could be repurposed for private religious use.
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