In 1921, a strange domestic drama unfolded in Orange, New Jersey, when a woman answered her door and found herself face-to-face with the husband she believed had been dead for more than a decade.
Charles Toops had vanished in 1907 after five years of marriage. When a badly decomposed body was later discovered in a mill pond in Morristown, New Jersey, his wife identified the dead man through personal items found with the remains, including a pruning knife believed to have belonged to Toops.
She was advised against viewing the body because of its condition, and as the years passed with no word from her missing husband, she accepted that he was gone.
Life moved on. Mrs. Toops remarried and became Mrs. Barker Pierson. Her son from the first marriage grew up and joined the Navy. She and her second husband built a new home life together.
Then came the doorbell.
Standing on the threshold was Charles Toops, very much alive, asking only for the whereabouts of his son.
The brief encounter raised unsettling questions. What had happened to Toops during all those missing years? Whose body had been found in the mill pond? And what did his return mean for the woman who had remarried in good faith, believing herself to be a widow?
Comes Back from the Grave to Face Remarried Wife
ORANGE, N.J. — Returning from the gave, where she thought she had laid him back in 1907, Charles Toops confronted his wife, now Mrs. Barker Pierson, at her home here.
Toops disappeared in 1907 after five years of married life. Some time later the body of a man was found in a mill pond at Morristown, N.J. The body was so badly decomposed that Mrs. Toops was not allowed to view it. From a pruning knife and other articles found on the dead man, however, she identified the body as that of her husband.
The years passed. Mrs. Toops, convinced that her husband was dead, married Barker Pierson. Adrian, the child from her first marriage, grew up and is now in the Navy.
Mrs. Pierson was dressing her son Fred, 5, when a ring came at the doorbell.
She opened the door, looked upon the face of the man she thought was dead, and almost fell over in a faint.
The apparition tipped his hat.
“Where is my son, Adrian?” he said.
“He is in the Navy,” replied Mrs. Pierson, mastering herself with an effort. She gave him the address.
Toops turned on his heel and walked away.
“I do not love my first husband any more,” Mrs. Pierson said later in the day. “He deserted me and I was sincere in my belief that he was dead.”
Mrs. Pierson and her present husband are very happy, they told reporters at their home today. They have no intention, they said, of allowing “any man to come between them.”
Mrs. Pierson admitted that she was somewhat worried over the possibility of being charged with bigamy, but she declared that she would follow the advice of friends and take no action in the matter.
“When the body was found shortly after the disappearance of my first husband,” she said, “I identified the pruning knife found on the body as one that had been carried by my husband in his work as a gardener. I was advised not to view the body because of its condition. As the years passed and no further word came from my husband, I was more thoroughly convinced than ever that he was dead. Otherwise I should not have remarried.”
Pierson said that he had not been acquainted with his present wife at the time Toops disappeared.
“I read in the papers of the finding of the body in the mill pond,” he said. “I recall the difficulty experienced in identifying it, but I certainly had no doubt that Toops was dead when my wife and I were married.”
Nothing has been seen or heard of Toops since he left his wife’s door.
Source: The Washington Herald. Washington, D.C. January 9, 1921.
