A Disposition to Be Rich: Ferdinand Ward, the Greatest Swindler of the Gilded Age

by Geoffrey C. Ward

  But as the horse was being harnessed, Fred Green appeared in the doorway and extended his hand. Ferdinand grandly tipped the porter and the stable boy a dollar each for their trouble and hurried off after his brother-in-law toward Perry & Brown’s Dry Goods Store.

  There, Clarence and Florence stood together on the wooden sidewalk, holding hands and ringed by reporters and passersby gathered to see the boy reunited with his notorious father.

  “Suddenly,” one newspapermen wrote, “Clarence spied Mr. Green walking toward him with [a] strange pallid man and said, ‘There is Uncle now.’ ”

  “Yes,” answered Florence, “and that other man must be your Papa.”5

  Ignoring the crowd, refusing to answer questions from reporters, Ferdinand knelt and embraced his son. Together, they climbed into Fred’s buggy. Ferd’s arm was around Clarence’s shoulder, and as his brother-in-law whipped his horse into action and they started toward Thompson, a reporter noted, he was “gazing fondly into his [son’s] face, the sweetest sight his eyes had seen for six-and-a-half long years.”6 Several carriages followed along behind, hired by newspapermen still hoping for a few words from Ferd. But when the buggy reached the Green home, he, Fred, and the children hurried inside. Ferd said nothing to anyone.

  The reporters were back the next morning, gathered around the door of the Congregational church. It was Sunday, and they all hoped for a chance to talk with Ferd. When he failed to appear, they still had column inches to fill, so they wrote about Clarence and Florence Green instead.

  A little man of [eight] years walked down the main street of the old-fashioned town of Thompson yesterday. He was rosy-cheeked, blue-eyed and fair-haired, and the cheerful expression on his face was infectious and caused many a smile to spread.

  He wore a derby hat, a dark blue pea jacket, knee breeches and kid gloves, and so sturdy was his small figure that no one could readily imagine circumstances under which the tiny maid of six whom he led by the hand would need a more valiant protector.

  The little girl was dark-eyed and smiling. She went with the lad up the stone steps of the white-steepled Congregational Church and walked with him sedately to pew No. 23 on the right hand side of the middle aisle, which they both entered. With a pretty expression she took from his hand the old-time, much-thumbed hymnal which he had politely handed to her.

  The lad was happier than he had ever been before, because he had at last found his father whom he could not recall ever having seen, and had been clasped to his bosom. But he did not know that that father had just left a prison where he had served six years and a half for as sensational financial frauds as ever were known in this country. He did not know what it will mean to him in time to come when he has to say: “I am the son of Ferdinand Ward.”7

  When the service finally ended and the Greens emerged from the church with the other worshippers, the disappointed newspapermen crowded around Fred.

  “Why did Ward not go to church today?”

  “I don’t suppose he wanted to face a crowd of strangers who would look at him and make remarks.… He ought to keep himself quiet until he is ready to go to work.”

  Had he said what he planned to do, now that he was free?

  He had not, and the stories that he had a fortune hidden away somewhere were false. “He has not any money. He did not save anything.”

  How long did Ward plan to stay in Thompson?

  “I do not know. I do not like to ask him a question like that on the first day. He might think I wanted him to go.”8

  He did want him to go, of course—and the next day he did. Ferd’s interest in getting to know his son had lasted just a little over twenty-four hours. He began weeks of restless travel in search of some way to reestablish himself as a rich man. He had a number of schemes in mind. None involved working for a living.

  His first stop was Newburgh, New York, where he consulted with John M. Gardner, the attorney who specialized in breaking wills and rewriting estate agreements whom Warden Brown of Sing Sing had recommended to him.†

  Together, he and Gardner traveled to New York to confront Ella’s lawyer, James McKeen. They insisted on being shown every item of property being held as part of Ella’s estate; Ferd made it clear he believed virtually all of it was rightfully his and that he was prepared to prove it in court. But before he could even begin to do so, the six state indictments still outstanding against him had to be dismissed. Meanwhile, he thought it best to feign cordial feelings toward the Greens. “How is my dear little fellow?” he asked his sister-in-law. “Oh how my heart goes out to him & how grateful I am to you all for caring for him as you have. God will bless you for it. Kiss him for me & tell him how I love him. Gratefully yours, F. Ward.”9

  Ferd hurried on alone to Geneseo to have a look at the old parsonage, boarded up since his father’s death. An old family friend, Mrs. E. Fred Youngs, gave a dinner party to welcome him back to town. Everyone agreed in advance that out of respect for the memory of his late parents, it would be best not to make any mention of where he had been the past few years. Everything went well enough until the guests strolled into the dining room, and Ferd noticed that each table setting included a tiny plate, just large enough to hold a single butter pat. He hadn’t seen a table so elegantly set since he’d left Brooklyn Heights, and he said how impressed he was that his old hometown seemed so fashionably up to date.

  “Why, Ferd Ward,” his hostess said, “where have you been!”‡

  He moved on to the Champion House in East Haddam, where the manager who was now leasing it from the Franklin Trust Company kindly allowed him to stay for a time without charge. He spent his afternoons on the piazza overlooking the Connecticut River, chatting up wealthy vacationers and paying court to Miss Francis Pelton, a twenty-three-year-old woman from Middletown who was the potential heir to the tidy fortune her father made from packaging headache powders. Ferd spent so much time with her, spinning along the country roads in a hired carriage, that local newspapers got wind of it in early August and reported that the couple was about to be married. Miss Pelton’s father denied the story—and whisked his daughter off to a friend’s home in Massachusetts until she came to her senses.

  Ferd was already looking elsewhere. He returned to Thompson several times that summer. As an old man, Clarence could remember nothing of those visits other than his father’s insistence that he come along on a terrifying series of long, plunging buggy rides through the countryside. But around the corner from the Greens lived Mrs. Robert Tallman, the widow of a Congregational minister, and her nineteen-year-old daughter, Frances. Sometime during one of his visits Ferdinand began to call at the Tallman home. Seventeen years earlier, when he had first stepped into his in-laws’ Brooklyn parlor, he had presented himself as an innocent newcomer in need of help adjusting to life in the big city. Now he was just as courtly and soft-spoken, apparently pious and eager to please as he had been then, but he also portrayed himself as a grieving widower, a fond father unfairly denied custody of his son, the victim of others’ greed who had bravely shouldered guilt that should have been far more widely shared.

  Frances believed it all. Before long Ferd was calling her “Fannie.” By the end of August, the New Haven Register was sure she and Ferd were engaged. They were “inseparable,” the newspaper reported. “They are constantly together when not driving behind Ward’s trotters or enjoying long walks about Thompson.”10 She gave Ferd photographs of herself and wrote him fond, encouraging letters whenever they were apart.

  Then, he overplayed his hand. A few days after the Register story, he hurriedly left town, saying he had to attend to important business and promising to return soon to spend the winter with the Greens. The next morning, the owner of the Putnam livery stable turned up at Fred Green’s front door; Ferd had run up a bill for $66 ($1,740 today) for the hire of fast horses and a fashionable carriage he had insisted on having specially imported from New York. Then he had refused to pay for it, claiming he’d been overcharged. Local shopkeepers w
ho had sold him armsful of flowers and box after box of candy with which he’d courted Frances Tallman had also not been paid. Neither had the dentist. Just as he had as a fifteen-year-old boy in Geneseo, Ferd had spent lavishly and expected someone else to foot the bills. His mother had paid them then; now, Fred Green, who had introduced his brother-in-law to all his latest creditors, was left to come up with the money.

  Green was so angry he did not trust himself to write to Ferd. His wife again did it for him.

  I feel very sorry about it but Fred does not feel willing to [have you] come here to spend the winter for he has lost confidence in you and says he would worry about you all the time. Of course you can come to see Clarence whenever you wish to do so.

  I am sorry and disappointed about you, Ferd. I hoped your bitter experience might be a lesson and in less than a year to start in the same way seems dreadful to me. You say you will be “driven to desperation and do something that will send you back to Sing Sing.” Do you ever think that you obtain money from other people by false representations that they have got to work and work hard for?

  Please, Ferd, act as you should. You will be happier than you ever can be in this way you are doing now.… So now do start to be a man. You do not want to be dependent upon your brother for your board and you can get something to do if you do not ask for a position of too great responsibility. Do something for yourself and show people what you can do and then come back to your boy and us and you will find a welcome always.11

  Ferd responded in fury.

  Mrs. Green,

  Your letter just received, it is but what I expected. Did it ever occur to you that the treatment of my own family & friends has caused this trouble? Had you done by me, as was my right to be done by, this trouble [would] never [have] occurred.

  But God will punish you for it, as He is now punishing Will [whose wife was ill]. If Kate dies it will be but a judgment on him for this inhuman treatment, & so, too, I fear your punishment will come for keeping my boy from me. I suffer now, but mark my words, as long as you keep my boy from me, you will never be happy. God will punish you some way.

  I have begged for work. I have offered to do anything but can find nothing. You enjoy happiness & a home out of the income of my boy’s estate, while, I, his father, must choose between starvation & prison. Mark my words you & Fred will never prosper while you keep him from me.

  F. Ward12

  Things were about to grow still worse. A few days after leaving Thompson for Newburgh, Ferd had written Fannie’s mother a letter carefully marked “Private.”

  My dear Mrs. Tallman,

  I want to make a little investment of $75 for Frances [nearly $1,930 today], & I know if I do it myself she will be angry. I shan’t tell you what it is but if you wish me to I will do it & you can send the money & then can say you paid for it, & I will return the money to you when I come. It will please her greatly & be of profit besides. You can send the money to me care of James W. Graff Esq., 2325 Seventh Avenue, N.Y. City & I will get it, & don’t say a word to her or to anyone about it.…§

  If she was not so particular about such things, I would do it myself. I will be in New York till next Tuesday, so you must send it at once or I will not get it. You can send a check or get a draft at the bank.

  This is a secret between you & I—so if you do it or not, say nothing to anyone. I am crowded with business but will be all through soon & then will come up for a nice time. Don’t let Fannie get blue.…

  Fondly,

  Ferdinand Ward13

  Mrs. Tallman evidently did send him the money, for in a hasty note on September 20, Ferd acknowledged that he had received it and that he would be up shortly “for a day or so.… Give Fannie my love & tell her I shall soon be there.”14

  When neither Ferdinand nor her money had turned up by the first week of October, Mrs. Tallman (who had likely heard of Ferd’s unpaid bills by then), wrote to Ferdinand, now hinting at legal action if her money—along with her daughter’s letters and photographs—were not returned to her immediately.

  Ferdinand did his best to head her off. He claimed to be “looking hourly for a remittance due me and the moment it comes I will see that [your] money is mailed to you.”15 Enclosed in the letter was a note from his lawyer, John Gardner, claiming that Ferd should have had the interest due to him from his share of the income from his parents’ estates “long before this.”16 Nothing was said about her daughter’s pictures or love letters.

  Mrs. Tallman now explicitly threatened to sue.

  Ferd responded from Stamford, where he was trying to talk one or another of his and Ella’s old friends into providing him with cash.

  What can I say that will convince you of how utterly I suffer from want of funds? Since leaving Newburgh I have had but $30 in all to pay my expenses & am now working on a farm for my board. [He was in fact living off the charity of the couple who had once grown the roses in his greenhouse.]

  You little know, Madame, how cruelly I have been treated by those who should stand by me in this trying time. I am legally entitled to certain moneys but being without funds to press my claim, & being hampered by those who should help me, I am left simply to write. That I will succeed in the end there is no doubt, but at present I am left utterly devoid of the necessities of life. Could you know how I suffer, I feel that your maternal heart would sympathize with me, for I have always found in you a friend. I have at times felt strongly tempted to end it all but for the sake of that boy I have waited & will try my best to pull through. I beg that you will deal leniently with me for it’s so hard. You little know how I suffer and God grant that it may soon come to an end. I beg that you will be patient a little longer for I am sure all will come in time. I have no one to go to for the money. But … I will soon have it & will send it. For the sake of my boy, if not for mine, I beg that you will bear with me a little longer. With a heart full of gratitude & a hope for a soon change in my troubles I remain

  Fondly,

  F. Ward

  Your daughter’s letters & pictures are not here & I have no money left to get where they are, but you may rest assured they will be sent [to] you just as soon as I can get there. No one shall see them.… As to those reports [of unpaid bills], please … remember how many there always are to kick a man when he is down.17

  Mrs. Tallman showed Ferd’s letters to the Greens. Fred was understandably outraged. His brother-in-law’s unpaid bills had been bad enough. Now it was clear that Ferdinand had abused the hospitality of his friends in Thompson, just as he had ruined his family in Brooklyn.

  Meanwhile, Sarah Ward Brinton—unaware that Ferd was in trouble again but wary—had innocently written the Greens to ask if her brother couldn’t stay with them over the winter. Her own husband would not have him in his house.

  I have just received a letter from my brother. In it he says, “I can’t get work nor can I starve.” He sends his address “Care of J.M. Gardner, Newburgh, NY.” Now, I know this man to be one who had some dealings with Ferd while he was at Sing Sing and I thought him at the time a doubtful acquaintance, and I am not willing to pass any money through him to Ferd. At the same time I do not wish to feel that, as his sister, I have left him to “starve.…”

  I begged him—the week before his release—to apply for some job away from New York where he could earn a living by the labor of his hands until he earned the confidence of the public. This he has not done, evidently.18

  She and her brother would be happy, she continued, to pay for his board if that would help. “I want to keep Ferd in the proper way but I do not wish to be black-mailed by his bad associates.”

  Nellie Green told her what had happened. Under the circumstances, it was simply impossible to have him stay in Thompson. Saddened but not surprised, Sarah responded right away.

  I thank you very much for writing me just as you have done for, hard as it may be, it is always best to know the truth and my only regret is that you should have carried the trouble for so long without
my sharing it. I knew nothing of Ferd or his ways, nor had I reason for suspicion until his letter to me this week. From the look and tone of it I knew he was deceiving me and yet I felt that I should not condemn him until I did know something. I do not wonder Mr. Green feels as he does and if Ferd goes on as he has begun there is but one end. I cannot influence him. I have tried hard enough but nothing seems to appeal to him. I fear that he has no reluctance to bring disgrace upon others. The small income which will be due him from his father’s estate will not bring him any luxuries and the principal is in trust, so fixed that there is not the smallest possibility of its ever being broken.

  Your letter to him was most kind and gentle and I feel deeply grateful to you for your patience with him.

  My sorrow for my brother is too great for me to speak much of it. He has always been gentle and kind to me but if he continues his transgressions what avails all that he has done?19

  Sarah sent Nellie Green’s letter on to her brother Will. He, too, wrote to reassure the Greens.

  I wish I knew what to say. Alas! I can say nothing. You have been kind and gentle to Clarence and I thank you and beg that you and Mr. Green will simply go on in the same old way. I note in one of your letters that you say that you fear you may have been unjust to me in your thoughts [presumably for failing to take more responsibility for his brother]. I had not known it but I do know that those whose opinion I prized did not understand me and that I could not make them. I have been more kind and gentle to F. than others think, but I have had to act in ways which no doubt seemed harsh. No matter. Some day all will be all right. And now I only wish that so far as you and Mr. Green can do so, you cease to worry. There are enough sad hearts without yours. When you write me again just tell me about Clarence and your home, etc. In fact we will try and forget what is sad from now on.20