Alimony Sam: The Man Who Wouldn't Pay
Part 1: He had the money. He simply wouldn't pay.
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Release Date: March 24, 2026
He had the money. He simply wouldn’t pay.
On the morning of July 27, 1925, Samuel W. Reid stood before Superior Judge Claude F. Purkitt in the Glenn County courthouse in Willows, California, and said something that courtrooms rarely hear.
He had the money. He simply wouldn’t pay.
The order wasn’t complicated. Five months earlier, a jury had granted his wife Phebe a divorce and directed Sam to contribute alimony and twenty dollars a month toward the support of their infant daughter, Zada May. Phebe had filed the complaint. She alleged extreme cruelty – constant nagging and faultfinding. Sam had denied it and demanded a jury trial, a rare move in a California divorce, and fought the case for four days before thirty witnesses. The jury deliberated twenty minutes. 1
Now Sam stood in contempt. Phebe had filed an affidavit. He hadn't paid a single dollar.
“He informed the court that he had the money,” the Willows Daily reported the next day, “but refused in open court to pay same to plaintiff.” 2
Sam had a reason. It was the only reason he would ever give, stated plainly and without apology: he would not pay for his daughter’s support while she remained in the care of people he considered unfit to raise her. Place Zada May in a proper home, and he would pay willingly. More than willingly – he’d offered ninety dollars a month, more than four times what the court required. But he would not send money to that household. Not one red cent.
Judge Purkitt ordered Sam confined to the Glenn County jail until he decided to abide by the court’s ruling. 3
And so Sam Reid walked into the jail, and began what would become one of the strangest residencies in California legal history.
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To understand why Sam Reid felt the way he did about that household, we need to go back to 1917.
Phebe Brownell was twenty years old and the only child of Irving Leroy Brownell, whose family had ranched Glenn County since 1859. At one time the Brownell operation had run to sixteen thousand acres and was among the largest sheep ranches in the American West. The family’s position – and influence – in the county was well known and not subtle.
That December, Phebe had eloped with Walter Steuben, a ranch hand employed on her father’s property. He was thirty-three. She was twenty. The ceremony was performed by a justice of the peace, and witnessed by the bride’s mother and the groom’s father. The local paper noted it with two lines. The couple took a honeymoon to the bay cities and returned to Orland, where they continued to live on the Brownell ranch while Walter continued to work it. 4
The marriage lasted four years. In October 1921, Phebe filed for divorce on grounds of non-support. A month later, Walter Steuben shot himself in the Brownell bunkhouse. 5
The bullet passed through his chest, just missing his heart. He survived, convalescing in the home of Phebe’s parents while half a dozen Northern California newspapers covered the story in vivid terms.
“Spurned by Wife, Tries Suicide,” ran one headline. 6
“Trouble with Wife Causes Suicide Try,” ran another. 7
The Sacramento Bee reported that Steuben “continues to express the wish that the bullet he fired into his breast had ended his life.” 8
He recovered with the help of his still-wife and mother-in-law. Later, when he recovered, the divorce was granted. And Phebe Brownell, at twenty-five, was free to begin again.
Phebe met Sam Reid in San Francisco. He was thirty-four, a veteran of the 363rd Infantry – “San Francisco’s Own” – who had come home from France, from the Meuse-Argonne and the Ypres-Lys offensives, and found work in the oil fields of Southern California. He was red-haired, good-natured, and by all accounts considerable company.
They were married on March 5, 1923, in San Francisco.
“The wedding took place in one of the private suites of the St. Francis which was a bower of pink roses and almond blossoms. The bride was dressed in a dainty afternoon frock of cream with all-over Egyptian lace. She carried a shower bouquet of lilies of the valley and pink rosebuds.
“Following the happy nuptials, a wedding luncheon was served in the mirror room of the St, Francis, the tables being a mass of pink roses and orchid colored irises and hyacinths. The bride and groom slipped away for a honeymoon shortly after the luncheon.”
The Orland Register covered the event with evident warmth, describing Phebe as “Miss Phebe Brownell” throughout – with no mention of a previous four-year marriage. It noted that the groom was “prominently connected with the Standard Oil Company” and that the couple would make their home in Anaheim.
Sam was a mechanic. 9
Nine months later, on December 1, 1923, Zada May Reid was born.
The marriage lasted eighteen months. By September 30, 1924, Sam and Phebe had separated. The young family had been living on the Brownell ranch. In her divorce complaint, Phebe alleged extreme cruelty – the same constant nagging and faultfinding she had cited against her first husband.
Sam’s answer denied the charges and raised his own: his wife refused to leave the comforts of her parents’ home or their influence , and the atmosphere and environment there were unfit for raising a child. 10
He was not wrong that Phebe was living with her parents. When the contempt hearing came in July 1925, she admitted as much in open court. And in Sam’s possession were letters – from Phebe’s mother, from Phebe herself – written during their marriage, describing Walter Steuben in terms that were anything but reassuring. Officers were watching him for other crimes. He had stolen tools. He was, Mrs. Brownell wrote, “crazy.” The letters had been written to Sam by the very people now raising his daughter, and he had kept every one. 11
What Sam could not have known in July 1925 was that Phebe had already, quietly, resumed contact with Walter Steuben. Less than a year later, on June 19, 1926, she’d remarry him.
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The contempt charge didn't appear to concern Sam Reid very much:
“Reid gave as his reasons for nonpayment that he would not pay for the support of his child while under the care of the present custodians,” the Willows Daily reported. “If placed under proper custody he would be willing to pay for the child’s support, he said.” 12.
Another paper put it more directly:
“Rather than pay his divorced wife money for the support of their minor child, Samuel W. Reid has decided to go to jail.” 13
That was accurate. It was also, in Sam’s view, not the whole story. He wasn’t dodging a responsibility. He was refusing to fulfill it on terms he considered dishonest. The distinction mattered to him enormously, and he would spend the next several years making sure everyone within range of a newspaper understood the difference.
By September, two months into his sentence, the Willows Daily checked in. Sam was still there. Still defiant. “As defiant as the first day he entered,” the paper noted, with what might have been a hint of exasperation. 14
He had also stopped shaving.
The beard was, he would later say, “just a whim.” He wouldn’t cut his hair or trim his beard until the court, on its own motion, set him free. He hadn't asked for relief and didn’t intend to. He was a man who’d gone over the top at the Meuse-Argonne at five-thirty in the morning and held his position for nine days without enough food or water. A county jail in Willows, California was not going to break him. 15
“I may be here for life,” he told anyone who asked. “What of it? I’m the first martyr to a great cause.” 16
Sam settled in. He found a radio. He subscribed to every newspaper he could get his hands on. He learned to cut other people’s hair.
And Glenn County, which had expected him to last a week, began to realize it had a problem.
Copyright 2026 Lori Olson White
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End Notes
1 “Sensational Divorce Suit to Be Tried in Feb.,” Willows Daily Journal, willows, CA, December 13, 1924, P. 1.
2 “Man Goes to Jail Rather than Pay Divorced Wife,” The Sacrfamento Bee, Sacramento, CA, July 29, 1925, P. 9.
3 “Reid Adjudged Guilty of Court Contempt,” Willows Daily, Willows, CA, July 28, 1925, P. 4.
4 “Steuben-Brownell,” The Chico Enterprise, Chica, CA, December 19, 1917, P. 8.
5 “Farmer Sued for Divorce Tries to Commit Suicide,” Willows Daily Journal, Willows, CA, November 1, 1921, P. 1.
6 “Spurned by Wife, Tries Suicide,” Woodland Daily Democrat, Woodland, CA, November 1, 1921, P. 1.
7 “Trouble with Wife Causes Suicide Try,” The San Francisco Call Bulletin, San Francisco, CA, November 1, 1921, P. 10.
8 “Recovery Expected: Walter Steuben, Who Wounded Himself Because Wife Asked Divorce, Improving,” The Sacramento Bee, Sacramento, CA, November 1, 1921, P. 9.
9 “Wedding Bells Ring Out in Bay City,” The Orland Register, Orland, CA, March 7, 1923, P. 1.
10 “Sensational Divorce Suit to Be Tried in Feb.,” Willows Daily Journal, willows, CA, December 13, 1924, P. 1.
11 “Sam Reid, Glenn’s “Alimony Martyr,” Replies to Letter of Foreman of Jury,” The Chico Enterprise, Chico, CA, January 11, 1927, P. 7.
12 “Reid Adjudged Guilty of Court Contempt,” Willows Daily, Willows, CA, July 28, 1925, P. 4
13 “Refuses to Pay, He Goes to Jail,” The Corning Daily Observer, Corning, CA, August 5, 1925, P. 3.
14 “Jailed 2 months Reid Still Defies Court Order,” Willows Daily Journal, Willows CA, September 17, 1925, P. 1.
15 “Alimony Martyr Must Stay in Jail; “I Like it Here,” Prisoner Replies When Told Verdict of Glenn Judge,” The Colusa Daily Sun, Colusa, CA December 1, 1926, P. 1
16 Maurice A. Raiser, “Sooner Stay in Jail than Pay Wife Alimony: Amazing case of the red-headed World War veteran, “Alimony Sam,” who has spent three years behind California prison bars “for a principle” and will return for life if the courts so decree,” The Courier-Journal, Louisville, KY, December 16, 1928, P. 9.
What a doozy of a story! I'm here for the next episode. Always a joy to read your lost and found stories.
I really enjoyed this Lori. I am looking forward to seeing how the story unfolds.