William Breckinridge Breach of Promise Trial: 1894

An orphan and not remarkably attractive, Pollard was so quiet and unobtrusive at school that one of her classmates described her as "mouse-like." Therefore, she was probably in awe when Breckinridge introduced himself and struck up a conversation. Three months later, Pollard wrote to the congressman for advice on how to handle a debt incurred to pay her tuition. In response, Breckinridge went to Wesleyan on August 3 to consult with Pollard on the matter. There he asked for a more "confidential" discussion away from the eyes and ears of protective chaperones, and they left the campus that hot summer night in a closed carriage. Breckinridge then convinced Pollard to meet him in Lexington. Two days later, after he had dinner with his wife, the couple met at a secret location and he seduced her.

At the congressman's suggestion, Pollard transferred to the Sayre Institute in Lexington so she could be closer to him. During the next three years, Breckinridge paid her tuition and board at Sayre and the two met at least 50 times. Pollard quickly became pregnant, giving birth to a child in a foundling asylum in Ohio on May 29, 1885. Two years later, she was pregnant again and gave birth on February 3, 1888. (The second child died two months later.) Pollard knew that Breckinridge was a married man with children, but she thought nothing of it; she was in love and "his slightest wish was law to me then." Pollard even gave up her two babies "because he asked me. He said that if I kept them it would be traced to him and they would be known as his children. A woman can't do more than that."