The Widow Clapsadle's Second $10,000 Proposal
After settling her first breach-of-promise suit for $150, Mary E. Clapsadle is back in court, demanding either marriage or $10,000 from Charles W. Eastabrook.
It appears that the Woodinville romance will never die so long as Charles W. Eastabrook refuses to marry Mary E. Clapsadle, for yesterday she took further steps toward compelling him to make good his alleged promise to make her his wife, or pay her the snug sum of $10,000 for 'the mental anguish she will suffer if he leaves her to go through this life alone.' This is the second time that the Widow Clapsadle has made Eastabrook the defendant in a $10,000 suit, but the first one she compromised, Eastabrook paying her $150 and the costs. It was said at the time that there was an understanding on the widow's part at least, that Eastabrook was to marry her, but he failed to do so.
According to her story the former suit was settled on the basis of the defendant promising to marry her. She does not make any direct statement of the kind, but alleges that on January 1, in consideration of her promising to marry the defendant, on request, within a few days, the defendant promised to marry her within a reasonable time. He has failed, she says, to keep his promise and as a result she has been injured in the sum of $10,000.
“'...the mental anguish she will suffer if he leaves her to go through this life alone.'”
Breach-of-promise suits were one of the few legal tools available to women when marriage functioned as an economic contract; a broken engagement could mean lost security, not just hurt feelings. The Clapsadle case reads today as both a gossip item and a reminder of how much was once at stake in a promise to marry.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.