With these three sons now standing behind her, Elizabeth hoped the custody case in Boston might be a shoo-in. After all, in the five years since her husband had left her penniless, she had singlehandedly transformed her situation. As she rode the train to Boston, she was the proud owner of no less than two houses in Illinois, with some $10,000 （$189,685） in savings in the bank.
In contrast, her husband had fallen on hard times. Partly due to the public’s outrage at his treatment of his wife, Theophilus hadn’t held a permanent pastorship since 1865; by this point, he was rather too comfortably reliant on the charity of friends. Elizabeth knew he must be near destitute, for when she sent him board money for the children, it was not returned, whereas in earlier years, he’d rejected her offers of financial support “with indignant scorn.”23
In fact, Theophilus’s financial situation was better than it once had been. In 1867, despite not having a job, he’d suddenly paid off the $4,000 debt that had plagued him for a decade. Was it mere coincidence that Elizabeth had generously signed away her rights to their shared property that year? She did not need the wealth herself and hoped her children might benefit. In his diary, Theophilus did not credit his wife for his windfall. Instead, he praised “the great mercy of God.”24
He himself had shown no mercy to Elizabeth in the years since he’d cut her off from her family. He’d not only stopped her from seeing the children; he’d kept her good clothes from her for eighteen months after his desertion. He returned them only when Elizabeth’s father—with whom she had at last been reunited—insisted he give them back.
Samuel Ware had realized his daughter was sane as soon as he saw her in person. “It is now my opinion that Mr. Packard has had no cause for treating my daughter Elizabeth as an insane person,”25 he testified. Yet the fact that Elizabeth’s male relatives now backed her, having seen through her husband’s “tissue of lies,”26 did not mean Theophilus was ready to relinquish his version of the truth.
Even when news of the committee’s report had reached him, rather than be horrified at the abuse his wife had suffered, he’d come out fighting for his own reputation. A letter had been quickly dispatched to the Chicago Tribune to dispute Elizabeth’s supposedly “false statements.”27
His continued lack of repentance meant Elizabeth expected him to fight her custody suit with every meager resource he had remaining. In truth, he’d never stopped fighting her—and not only privately, in refusing her access to the children, but also in public. Seeing his wife rise to political prominence had been an outrage to Theophilus; he’d embarked on an aggressive media campaign to discredit her. He made frequent “bullying demand[s]”28 on newspapers to publish his side of the story until even they had had enough. “The persistence of this man in thrusting himself before the public!” one paper exclaimed disapprovingly, declining to publish his submitted articles as they were “such as no respectable paper would publish.”
But when he did successfully place pieces—which happened more often than not—he claimed people were being duped by Elizabeth. Like McFarland before him, he cited her new career as evidence. “No other proof of her monomania is necessary than that she is…roving from town to town…peddling this pamphlet.”29
Therefore, when Elizabeth finally arrived in Boston, she immediately hired her old friend Samuel Sewall to represent her in what she expected would be a bitter battle. Back in 1864, McFarland had written, “I have no hesitation in saying that any person of good intelligence, who has had sufficient opportunity of judging, will, sooner or later, share this opinion [that she is insane].”30 But five years on, this brilliant lawyer remained steadfastly by Elizabeth’s side.
It was Sewall who’d told her about the new law that was then passing through the Massachusetts Senate. It would allow a married woman to become the legal guardian of her children. The news had unleashed a chain reaction for Elizabeth, leading her to where she was now: on the cusp of reclaiming her family.
Or so she desperately hoped.
“The case was formally presented,” she later remembered, “and met with all the favor from the court we could desire.”31
But Theophilus’s lawyer begged an extension; the case was deferred until July.
Before then, however, Elizabeth received an unexpected letter. On May 24, 1869, Libby, George, and Arthur wrote to her to say, “We will gladly accept of your offer to go out and live with you in Chicago.”32