Excitement was at a fever pitch in March 1886 in the village of Colliers Mills, in western Ocean County. The richest man in the village, Ephraim P. Emson, a former senator and a freeholder who had built the local schoolhouse, was pitted against Louise Blackman, a young Quaker schoolteacher who had been born in Tuckerton.
Emson had hired Blackman to teach at the village school. Then, according to her, he began to court her by sending an employee with candy.
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