The Remarkable Rise of Eliza Jumel

by Margaret A. Oppenheimer

  Most disturbingly, Nelson said, Eliza had become convinced that he and his children were trying to kill her: “I used to get my breakfast very early, and she would reserve her tea and would not touch it at all until I got back, under the idea that it had been poisoned, and I had on my return to buy and convince her to take the tea and drink it myself in her presence; I did so many times; she also charged me and my daughter with attempting to poison her food, her beef tea, and her medicine.” Often he would have to drink a little of the medicine before she would take it herself.22

  Eliza Pery seconded her father’s narrative: “She gave manifestations of craziness; she accused us all of poisoning her; she said my father put the bed-bug poison in her tea—(laughter)—and put tacks in her shoes when she got out of bed, so that it would kill her.” She accused her great-niece of trying to poison her too: “She said I carried arsenic in my pocket to sprinkle in her tea and over her beefsteak; afterwards she would turn around and kiss me very affectionately, and say, ‘how much I love you!’”23

  William testified that Eliza had changed toward him too, beginning in 1859:

  I was still at the supper table, when she came down from [her] room in a furious passion, and said that I intended to kill her. I said, “How is that?” She said, “Oh, you know,” and further, “You have been in my rooms and unscrewed the top of my wardrobe to kill me.” I said “That is outrageous.” I then brought her up into the room and showed her that there was nothing the matter with the wardrobe; she would not believe it; I said I better leave the house, then. I left and afterwards met my sister, and she wanted me to call on her and see her, which I did. She received me very kindly, but in going away she always repeated the charge that I intended to kill her and asked if I was not sorry and wanted me to confess it. I said I would not confess a thing of that kind that I was not guilty of.24

  After that 1859 incident, she put a patch over the image of his face in the portrait painted in Rome—or so William said.25 The canvas shows no indication of damage today.

  Regardless of whether the picture drawn of Eliza in court was an accurate representation of her mental state, the tactic used to challenge the will—arguing that the testator was insane at the time she made it—was widely employed in estate litigation by the 1860s.26 This approach had become possible after medical practitioners in the late eighteenth century began to differentiate among degrees of insanity, arguing that an individual could be irrational in certain domains, but competent in others.27 For example, a woman like Eliza might be capable of conducting business, but “morally insane”—emotionally and ethically unbalanced.

  A will with provisions that cut off a child or other “natural” heir could be presented as evidence that the testator was of unsound mind when it was made. As early as 1811, Philadelphia physician Benjamin Rush had opined that a man who left most of his estate “to a church, or any other public institution, or to a stranger, to the injury of a family of children who had never offended him, and whose necessities, or rank in life, as well as their blood, intitled [sic] them to be his heirs … should be considered as morally deranged; and his will should be set aside as promptly as if he had disposed of his estate in a paroxysm of intellectual derangement.”28

  More often than not, charges of undue influence by a person acting against the testator’s best interests accompanied moral insanity claims in estate litigation.29 Smith was assigned the unsavory role of the influencer in the Jumel case, accused of having taken advantage of Eliza’s derangement to persuade her to benefit him and his church. He was questioned aggressively about his meetings with her.

  The picture that could be pieced together from his answers was far from black and white. His claim that Eliza had asked him to visit her in 1862 was suspect, since she had not seen him for three years previously. Her decision to give him a personal legacy raised the possibility of undue influence as well. On the other hand, most of the provisions of the will that Eliza had signed under his supervision did not differ greatly from those drafted by her family attorney, Wetmore. Even many of the charities that he and Smith had suggested were the same.

  Nelson had fared the worst from the revisions Smith had superintended. In Wetmore’s draft, he was to receive the interest on thirty thousand dollars. According to the clergyman, Eliza had said that “it must be put down at ten thousand dollars.” She had insisted that Eliza Pery’s share be reduced also: her great-niece should receive the interest on ten thousand rather than on twenty thousand dollars. The reverend had tried to dissuade her, he claimed: “I said, ‘Madame, I have one request to make of you, and that is that you will not put down Mrs. Pery.’ She said that she must do so, as it was too much; that Mrs. Pery was vain and frivolous and would waste it all in folly. ‘But Madame,’ said I, ‘remember that this is your last act.’” After further persuasion on his part, Eliza said, “Perhaps we had better split it; put it down at fifteen thousand dollars.” But when Smith read the revised will back to her, “she declared ‘that she could not allow it to stand at fifteen thousand dollars, that it was too much, and that she must put it at ten thousand dollars.’”30

  The narrative is not implausible. Wetmore himself had tried unsuccessfully to persuade his client to increase her bequest to her great-niece when he prepared the draft will. “I want you to give to Eliza twenty thousand dollars more,” he had said. But she wouldn’t discuss the matter. “I suggested, after all, that she should give Eliza another sum,” Wetmore said, “but I could not bring her mind to comprehend it; she would talk always of persons trying to kill her; her mind was vague.” Indeed, he was unable to get her to specify the disposal of more than about one hundred thousand dollars of her estate.31 “When he could not persuade her to make any other bequests, he said, ‘Shall I put down that the rest shall be divided evenly among these people?” In the end he did so, leaving her with the draft.32 Wetmore, therefore, was largely responsible for the way in which the residuary estate was handled.33

  Was Eliza insane when she made the 1863 will? Its provisions were certainly different from those she had envisioned twelve years before. In the interim, she had become strongly resistant to drawing up a testament and developed mixed feelings about her family. But it is unclear whether she was as delusional as they painted her to be. In the early 1860s she was still involved in business transactions, in spite of the family’s later efforts to represent her as divorced from reality. The statement made by Nelson that she had “charged some very respectable gentlemen, neighbors of hers, with robbing her or trying to rob her of her property” may have been made to explain away her sharp-witted 1863 investigation of the individuals she suspected of encroaching on her lands. Her suit against the surveyor hired to determine the property lines might otherwise have been used as evidence that she had remained competent to manage her affairs.

  Other stories the family had told in court could have been opportunistic distortions of actual events as well. For example, the contention that she had men digging and blasting on her property in search of buried treasure may have been inspired by blasting operations she had ordered in 1857 for the digging of a new well near the mansion.34 Another startling tale Nelson had offered from the witness stand had riffed off Eliza’s habit of having a gun fired from her grounds each evening (recounted in the profile of her published in 1855). Building on this minor eccentricity, Nelson had claimed that from December 1854 through May or June 1855, she had “got up a military company which she called her French legion, and uniformed them in a very fantastical manner, and had them march about the house.” At night, “a guard was set and a countersign agreed upon and given; guns were fired and guards were relieved from time to time … and there was a pretty general disturbance of all rest.”35 Supposedly William had been given a uniform and served as their commander, a detail that may have been suggested to Nelson by Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations (1861), in which the boy Pip, commanded to amuse the unstable Miss Havisham, claimed that he, she, and her niece had “played with flags
” and then “all waved [their] swords and hurrahed.”36

  During the attempt to overturn the will, no explanation was offered for why William had been cut off entirely when his sister and Nelson weren’t. In truth, Eliza had grounds for being upset with her great-nephew, although they were not revealed in court. Sometime in the late 1850s or early 1860s, he had had an affair, of which Eliza was aware.37 Then he had secretly married Isabella A. Nolston, a woman a year his junior who was said to have been a servant.38 He must have known that his family would not approve, because he had left it to his sister to break the news.39

  No record of the marriage has been located and its date remains obscure. Reportedly William was asked in 1866 whether he was married, but said he couldn’t answer the question, because two women claimed him as husband.40 This anecdote may have been a scurrilous invention, but a curious fact remains: William fathered two children born within the space of a year—and there is no indication that they were twins. A son, Leslie, arrived in either the second half of 1864 or the first half of 1865, and a daughter, Louisa, entered the world within the same time period.41 Unlike Leslie, she was not listed as living with her father and Isabella in 1870, but had joined them by 1880, raising the possibility that she was born of William’s earlier relationship and brought into the household belatedly.42

  Although Eliza’s will was made before the worst of William’s amatory entanglements surfaced, she might have been upset not only by his earlier affair but also his reluctance to settle into a profession. He had begun working in his father’s law office in 1856, shortly before his sixteenth birthday, but was listed at the firm’s address for only a year.43 Two years later Eliza had set him up in the grocery business, a venture that lasted twelve months at most, from May 1859 to spring 1860.44 There is a hint that he may have treated the business as a cash cow rather than a professional opportunity. Nelson was asked in 1873 whether Eliza had accused William of robbing her in connection with it. Although Nelson said Eliza made no such charge, the posing of the question raises the possibility that the allegation had a basis in fact.45

  After the short-lived grocery closed, Nelson had written to a fellow lawyer in search of job opportunities for his son.46 But no business or professional addresses were listed for William in the New York City directories during the last five years of Eliza’s life.

  Whether or not she was justified in cutting him off, her decision would not stand. After only a few minutes of deliberation, the jury ruled “that Madame Jumel was of unsound mind” when she made her 1863 will. Eliza would be considered to have died intestate—that is, without a will. Her property would be divided among her blood relatives, as dictated by state law.

  Thanks to Nelson’s foresight in buying out the Joneses’ claims, his two children were Eliza’s sole known heirs—and they had agreed to share one-third of her fortune with him. But within a year the three presumed inheritors would face unanticipated claims on the estate.

  37

  PROLIFERATING PRETENDERS

  As soon as Eliza’s will was overturned, aspirants to her estate sprouted like skunk cabbage in the spring. Her brother, John, assumed to have died without issue more than half a century before, was resurrected in the form of four hopeful siblings who said that they were his children.1 These young pretenders, easily vanquished, were replaced by the Jones siblings, regretful of having sold their claim to a million-dollar estate for forty thousand dollars. Their lawyer, the count Johannes—a failed actor bearing a noble title suspected of having been self-bestowed—offered up extravagant courtroom theatrics in what had become by then a cause célèbre.2

  Sporting corkscrew curls and velvet-collared coat, he began by declaiming the bill of complaint, “a document of preternatural legal length requiring two hours to read.”3 Charles O’Conor, representing Nelson and his children, thought it unnecessary to read aloud his answer to the bill, so the count did it for him, “consuming nearly another hour.”4 Next the tireless count embarked on his argument, in which he charged Nelson with having defrauded the Joneses by offering them less than the Jumel estate was worth. His opening, reported the New York Herald,

  was biographical, historic, eulogistic, poetic, impassioned, and rhapsodic—in fact, going through all the alternating changes of the most diverse schools of oratory, with skilled specimens of his peculiar power of mimicry thrown in as pleasing interludes. The biographic embraced a sketch of the family histories of Madame Jumel and that portion of the Jones family whose names appear as plaintiffs in the case; the historic ran all the way through from ante-diluvian times; the eulogistic was when he compared the judge to Paul of Tarsus at Caesarea; the poetic gleamed like sabers flashing in the sunlight; the impassioned was when bathos and pathos struggled for the mastery; and the rhapsodic the peroration, wherein he grew greatly and almost tearfully agonizing over the divine attributes of justice. His mimic representations included the litigants on both sides and the opposing counsel, who smiled at them or at the count, it was impossible to tell which, as heartily as the rest.5

  Through this torrent of oratory, the presiding judge “kept himself busy whittling.”6

  The case was adjourned until late the next morning to allow the count to produce witnesses to the value of the estate. Instead he returned unaccompanied, and to the open glee of the spectators in the crowded courtroom, called opposing counsel O’Conor, who owned land in Washington Heights, “to testify as to the value of property there.”7 Later in the proceedings, he informed his auditors that “he never wrote out a line of his speeches, but relied on the Holy Spirit to tell him what he should say.” When laughter rippled across the room, “he turned about on the assembled throng and pitched into them for scoffing at the Scriptures.”8

  The drama ended with the judge’s measured decision that no proof of fraud had been presented: “The plaintiffs, not having been mentioned in the will, were no parties to the suit to set [it] aside.” The money “paid them was not, under the circumstances, an inadequate consideration.”9 Nelson “was warmly congratulated by a large host of friends,” while the Joneses were nowhere to be seen, having failed to attend the trial prosecuted on their behalf.10 Even before it opened, they may have come to share an exasperated lawyer’s opinion that the count Johannes was “a public pest and a disgrace to the profession.”11 Alternately, the count may have been correct in claiming that Nelson had bribed at least one of them to stay away.12

  A more worrisome set of claimants pursued a case against Nelson and his children that meandered on expensively for more than three years. The thirty-three plaintiffs were descendants of a man named James Bowen, who had lived and died in Rehoboth, Massachusetts, about eleven miles northeast of Providence. The Bowen clan claimed that Eliza, née Betsy Bowen, had been James’s youngest child, making them her relatives and entitled to share in her estate.

  In their depositions, recorded by commissioners crisscrossing Rhode Island and Massachusetts, James’s descendants painted a new picture of Eliza. In their telling, she was a farmer’s daughter; a girl who visited Providence with her father to peddle huckleberries.13 She worked out as a servant from about the age of twelve, sometimes in Rehoboth and other times in Providence.14 When she was around eighteen, an older brother traveling to western New York left her in New York City so that she could attend school.15 Subsequently she met and married Stephen Jumel. But she maintained contact with her favorite sister, Elizabeth (“Lizzie”) Thatcher, née Bowen, and sometimes sent her money.16

  The Bowens claimed that Eliza and Stephen paid a visit to Lizzie in Rehoboth sometime between 1808 and 1812. Lizzie’s daughter, Selva, and Selva’s husband, John Bullock, were visiting at the same time, bringing tea and sugar because Lizzie was ill. As described in 1868 by ninety-eight-year-old John Bullock, the two couples spent the night in Lizzie’s house in case her condition worsened.17 Later Eliza sent money to pay for Lizzie’s gravestone.18 Around 1821 she visited Rehoboth again to attend the funeral of a distant cousin by marriage.19


  Holes and inconsistencies appeared in the story as the deponents were cross-examined. Eliza was claimed first to be an illegitimate daughter of James Bowen’s daughter Patience and then a daughter of James himself.20 Her supposed relatives were unable to describe her beyond saying that she “was richly dressed” and “a handsome woman.”21 They had trouble accounting for the existence of her sister Maria Jones, sometimes identifying her with Patience Bowen and sometimes claiming her as an illegitimate child of Patience.22 To explain why she and Eliza had referred to their mother as Phebe, they averred that James Bowen’s wife, Abigail, had changed her name to Phebe Hannah after her marriage.23

  It was hoped that an examination of eighty-nine-year-old Elizabeth Salisbury, who knew the Bowen family history down to her fingertips, would clarify these discrepancies. Although she was half-deaf, almost blind, and unable to walk, mentally she was still as sharp as a tack. Interviewed in her two-room house in Warren, Rhode Island, she reeled off genealogical data with ease: “Did I know Uncle James Bowen? I guess I did. Lived not more’n half a mile from him all the days of my life as long as he lived … He was a fine old man, too.” Martin Bowen? Of course she knew him: “He was Uncle James Bowen’s son. Living? No, bless your soul and body, he’s been dead these twenty years.”24

  Under questioning, Salisbury detailed several generations of the family with impressive clarity. But just as the crucial cross-examination that would focus on Eliza began, she put her hand to her head and complained of pain. Assisted to her bed, she moaned, trembled, and fell into convulsions. The paperwork recording her deposition terminates with a brief, sad note: “The commissioners are of the opinion that the witness is entirely unfit and unable to testify unless there be hereafter an improvement in her condition.”25 She never recovered sufficiently to be reexamined.