If You Knew Mollie . . .

Who really knew Mollie Strickland? According to accounts, Margaret Whiteley did not know her well, maybe not at all. We do know that she was the oldest daughter of Wade H. and Elizabeth Strickland who lived in Magnolia, a mining community near Boulder. Was she a prostitute or did her social standing, questionable morals, and age influence public opinion? The town took the side of the wronged Margaret and condemned Richard and Mollie as evidenced in the divorce settlement. Margaret was awarded everything except Richard Whiteley’s library of books, a trunk and clothing. With that, he moved out of the family home on Whiteley Hill.

Professionally, Whiteley showed no signs of slowing down and the political power he wielded in the community was undiminished. On October 29, 1885, Whiteley purchased the home at 646 Pearl Street, the home built for William Arnett (aka the Arnett-Fullen house) and considered to be “the gem of the city”, and together Richard and Mollie retreated from social life. By 1890, after a series of successful court cases and lucrative investments, he had regained a measure of social respectability. When Richard died on September 26th of that year, Mollie was not yet 30 years old.

As a fatherless, Irish immigrant, Richard H. Whiteley would become an accomplished man remembered for his empathy and compassion for those who had hard lives, providing legal services to the poor for free. Those who have written about Richard Whiteley consider him a man of contradictions. They say he was a churchgoing man yet fathered an illegitimate child; he supported the rights of women yet physically abused his wife; he was a man of position in society yet he defied convention by marrying a younger woman with a questionable past. Maybe Richard was not a man of contradictions. Perhaps Mollie’s past is what attracted Richard to her. Maybe Mollie was everything Margaret was not.

Mollie continued to live in the Arnett-Fullen house until November 16,1899; she purchased the house at 1937 Spruce on December 2, 1899.