Love stories abound in South Bethlehem. Take, for example, the marriage of South Bethlehem's own "royal" couple in October 1880: Warren Abbott Wilbur, son of banker and Lehigh Valley Railroad president, E.P. Wilbur, wedded his first love, Sallie Packer Linderman, daughter of Dr. Garrett Brodhead Linderman.

The untimely death of Sallie in 1898 inspired Warren to donate funds for the bell tower, which was built at the southwest corner of Cathedral Church of the Nativity. Inscribed on the east wall beneath the ceiling, Warren dedicated the bell tower to the memory of his wife, Sallie.

Three years later, widower Warren Abbott Wilbur married his second love, Kate Ellen, the daughter of long-time family friend, Charles Brodhead.

Shortly thereafter, Warren and Kate Wilbur moved into their spacious new residence at 531 West Third St.-a sprawling Colonial Revival mansion with a gambrel roof flanked by two sets of double chimneys, a mansion fit for a bank president.

Earlier in 1892, Warren Wilbur hired architect A.W. Leh who designed a stable on a separate lot located around the corner on Cherokee Street. In 1912, Mr. Wilbur, as called by his servants, traded his carriage and prized horses for his new Pierce Arrow. In need of a personal chauffeur and mechanic, Wilbur hired 25-year-old George Weaver, an American of Irish decent. George resided in the adequate yet convenient living quarters on the second floor of the stable-turned-garage.

Wilbur lived his life according to a period of time whose years were numbered, a lifestyle to which he and his parents were accustomed during Fountain Hill's "Gilded Age." Financially sound, Wilbur made sojourns to exotic locations in the Caribbean, specifically to the island of Jamaica. In 1905, Wilbur and his wife were frequent guests at the rebuilt 400-room Titchfield Hotel, which overlooked Port Antonio. Invariably, chauffer George Weaver would find himself driving Wilbur's Pierce Arrow on Jamaica's narrow and muddy roads.

During summer months, George would chauffer the automobile at Alexandria Bay while Wilbur, his wife Kate and his mother Stella rusticated on their Thousand Islands summer retreat, Sport Island.

Sarah, a 16-year-old servant-girl hired by Wilbur's wife in 1910, traveled to South Bethlehem from Laury's Station, where she left behind her Irish parents, Patrick and Sarah (Maxwell) McNamara. Mrs. Wilbur considered Sarah an impeccable servant, a real "treasure." It was customary for Wilbur's servants to join him whenever he was away from his South Bethlehem mansion.

Wilbur gave his Irish servants the day off on Sundays to attend church services, a tradition started by his own parents, E.P. and Stella. On his day off, chauffer Weaver enjoyed fishing with local sportsmen.

On several occasions, Weaver caught the eye of Sarah McNamara, second-floor maidservant. When their paths crossed again, each enjoyed the camaraderie of their company among their peers on Sundays during the summer. Before long, a romance budded and the couple became "an item," according to members of the Wilbur household staff.

Back home at the mansion at 531 West Third St., an unwritten rule among Fountain Hill gentry was to practice fairness in their treatment of servants, for any cruelty, intimate advances or unpleasantness toward them usually "got around" the neighborhood - eventually through town - and back to the family.

But servants' work was no picnic. They still had an extraordinary amount of work, from cooking to cleaning and washing sheets, clothes, tablecloths and napkins.

Eventually George Weaver married Sarah McNamara. In doing so, they left the Wilbur mansion and moved into a home on Cherokee Street. George and Sarah became the parents of a daughter, Dorothy, born in 1914 and in 1919, a son, Merritt, perhaps named in honor of Warren A. Wilbur's deceased brother. Though Sarah no longer worked as a servant, George remained Mr. Wilbur's chauffer through the 1920s.

What remains of this tale are living descendants who survive George and Sarah and the place where they met and fell in love - at Warren A. Wilbur's mansion, which still stands at 531 West Third Street as an apartment house, along with the garage on Cherokee Street, just as Warren Wilbur and his wife Kate Ellen had left them.