12. “Madame Jumel’s estate,” 5.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. MJM 4.8, two slightly different English translations of a letter from Eliza Jumel to Charles Louis [sic] d’Orléans, prince de Joinville (the addressee’s given names were actually François Ferdinand; he had a brother named Louis Charles).
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
18. “Madame Jumel’s estate,” 4.
19. “Local news … Jumel will case,” The Sun, November 13, 1866, 4.
20. “Madame Jumel’s estate,” 5.
21. Ibid.
22. “Madame Jumel’s estate,” 4.
23. Ibid., 4–5.
24. Frederick David Bidwell, Taxation in New York State (Albany: J. B. Lyon, 1918), 264; Ancestry.com, U.S. IRS Tax Assessment Lists, 1862–1918 [database online] (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2008).
25. “Madame Jumel’s estate,” 4. Dr. Alonzo Clarke, a kidney specialist, first visited her in 1863.
26. Ibid., 5.
27. The World, July 18, 1865, 5 [death notice].
28. “Obituary. Madam Eliza B. Jumel,” New York Times, July 18, 1865.
29. “Funeral of Madam Jumel,” The World, July 19, 1865, 4.
30. New York City Department of Health, Borough of Manhattan, Register of Deaths, 1798–1865 (available on microfilm at the New York Public Library).
31. “Obsequies. Funeral of Madame Jumel,” New York Herald, July 19, 1865, [1].
32. Ibid.
33. “Funeral of Madam Jumel”; “Obsequies. Funeral of Madame Jumel.” The lesson began with 1 Corinthians 15:20.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid.
36. Plot 498, Westerly Division of Trinity Cemetery and Mausoleum.
CHAPTER 36: A DISPUTED INHERITANCE
1. “The widow of Aaron Burr,” New York Observer and Chronicle, July 20, 1865, 230.
2. “The contest about the alleged will of the late widow of Aaron Burr—motion to settle the issues—over $1,000,000 of property involved,” New York Times, February 8, 1866, 2; “The Jumel will case,” New York Times, November 13, 1866, 8; “Madame’s Jumel’s will,” New York Herald, February 8, 1866, 8.
3. “Madame Jumel’s estate,” New York Herald, November 13, 1866, 5.
4. Ibid.; “Madame’s Jumel’s will.” Some of the sources indicate that Rev. Smith was to share in the residuary estate, but the will—at least as reproduced in the February 8 article in the Herald—barred him from doing so. The accuracy of the Herald’s transcript cannot be verified, because the original will is missing from the probate files in Manhattan.
5. Initial estimates of the value of the Jumel estate, made within a year or two of Eliza’s death, ranged from “$700,000 or $800,000” to “over a million of dollars” (“The benefit of kindness—the will of Madame Jumell [sic] Burr,” New-York Tribune, August 14, 1865, [8]; “Madame Jumel’s estate”). As time passed, the value of the estate was exaggerated, with estimates reaching up to six million dollars (“Current topics,” Albany Law Journal, December 7, 1872, 380). It is difficult to pin down an exact figure, and the estate was worth more when it was finally settled than in 1865, due to increasing real estate values. By adding up land sales made in the years after Eliza’s death and money received for parcels taken by the City of New York under its power of eminent domain, my best estimate is that the estate was worth approximately one million dollars when Eliza died.
6. NYHS-JP, box 2, folder A, copy of Eliza B. Jumel’s will, July 23, 1851.
7. N.Y. Sup. Ct., William Inglis Chase vs. Nelson Chase and others, 1878 C-36 (contains a copy of the October 12, 1865, agreement between Nelson and his children).
8. There were two agreements, the first for forty thousand dollars and the second, drawn up seventeen months later, for thirty thousand dollars; see “The Jumel will case” and “Law reports,” New York Times, October 22, 1870, 3; “The Jumel estate,” New York Herald, October 23, 1870, 10. Although it appears that the second agreement was designed to supersede the first, virtually all later references to the deal with the Joneses indicate that forty thousand dollars was the sum paid. William and Eliza would not have been considered Eliza Jumel’s legal heirs without these transactions, as their relationship to her was through their mother, Mary, who was the illegitimate daughter of Eliza’s sister, Maria. The descendants of a bastard child, even if legitimate themselves, could not inherit from maternal relatives who died intestate. In the absence of a will, they could only inherit from their own mother. The Joneses, in contrast, were Maria’s legitimate children, so they could inherit from their mother’s sister.
9. “The Jumel will case.”
10. Ibid.; B-779, box 112, deposition of Nelson Chase.
11. “Madame Jumel’s will”; B-779, box 112, deposition of Nelson Chase, and box 113, deposition of Eliza J. Caryl. Eliza left Felicie two thousand dollars. Possibly the extra five hundred was negotiated during the litigation after Stephen’s death when the delay in payment was agreed upon (the money should have been paid within a year after his decease).
12. “Charles O’Conor,” Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature 20, no. 1 (July 1874), 117.
13. Liber 368:313, 316, 327, 343, 350, 367, 383–84.
14. N.Y. Ct. Ch., Eliza Jumel vs. Catherine Ottignon and others, BM 709-J; BM 710-J.
15. Henry Ellsworth Gregory, “Charles O’Conor. 1804–1884,” in Great American Lawyers, ed. William Draper Lewis, vol. 5 (Philadelphia: John C. Winston Company, 1908), 92–93.
16. “Charles O’Conor, Esq., to defend the great state prisoner,” The Daily Age [Philadelphia], June 8, 1865, 1.
17. MJM 4.14, photocopy of a letter from Nelson Chase to Eliza Jumel and Eliza Jumel Chase, February 10, 1852.
18. “Two will cases,” New York Observer and Chronicle, September 14, 1865, 43.
19. “Madame Jumel’s estate,” 4.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid.
26. James C. Mohr, “The paradoxical advance and embattled retreat of the ‘unsound mind’: Evidence of insanity in the adjudication of wills in nineteenth-century America,” Historical Reflections 24, no. 3 (Fall 1998): 426–27; Yvonne Pitts, Family, law, and inheritance in America: The social and legal history of nineteenth-century Kentucky (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 84.
27. Mohr, “The paradoxical advance,” 417–18.
28. Ibid., 420–21.
29. Pitts, Family, law, and inheritance, 54.
30. “Madame Jumel’s estate,” 5.
31. Ibid., 4.
32. “The Jumel will case,” New-York Tribune, November 13, 1866, 8. The Tribune indicated that Wetmore only “got her to give away about fifty thousand dollars’ worth of her property,” but the Herald’s figure of one hundred thousand dollars appears to be more accurate, considering the individual bequests.
33. There is no evidence as to whether Nelson would have shared in the residuary estate in Wetmore’s draft of the will.
34. NYHS-JP, box 2, folder H, agreement between Eliza Jumel and Thomas Connolly.
35. “Madame Jumel’s estate,” 4.
36. Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, intro. by Stanley Weintraub (Signet Classic, 1998), 67. A document purporting to be an extract from the diary of Anna Parker, later Mrs. John V. L. Pruyn, appears to have been inspired by Great Expectations also (NYHSJP, “From the diary of Miss Anna Parker”). Supposedly it recorded a visit Parker and acquaintances had paid to Eliza in October 1862. In the entry, Parker portrayed Eliza as a mad old woman: rambling on about the past, living in an unkempt house, and keeping her dining room table set with moldering items placed there decades before. However, the likelihood that Parker paid the visit as described is slim, because in 1862 she was already married and had a young son, whereas the diary was said to have been that which she kept as a girl. Anna’s son, John V. L. Pruyn Jr., was
born in Albany on March 14, 1859, as documented by a record for him in Ancestry.com, U.S. Passport Applications, 1795–1925 (see chap. 6, n. 17). Probably the purported diary entry was prepared for use in the will case, but ultimately not submitted as evidence. It became part of Eliza’s legend nonetheless, after being published by her first biographer (Shelton, 188–94).
37. “The Jumel estate case,” New York Herald, January 31, 1873, 11.
38. “The Jumel estate case”; “Special correspondence. Our New York letter,” Troy Weekly Times, June 14, 1873, [1]. Nollston’s name is listed on the birth certificate of their daughter Ella (born March 25, 1870), available on www.FamilySearch.org (accessed December 27, 2011). Her age comes from the 1880 census; she was then thirty-nine and William was forty. See Ancestry.com and the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints, 1880 United States Federal Census [database online] (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com, Inc., 2010).
39. “The Jumel estate case.”
40. “Special correspondence. Our New York letter.”
41. Leslie’s age was given as five when the census takers arrived at the mansion on July 11, 1870; see the 1870 United States Census on www.FamilySearch.org. Ten years later, in June 1880, census takers on Long Island reported that Louisa was fifteen; see Ancestry.com, 1880 United States Federal Census.
42. Ibid.
43. See the entry for William J. [sic] Chase in Trow’s New York City Directory … for the year ending May 1, 1857 (New York: John F. Trow, 1856).
44. “The Jumel estate case.” Nelson indicated that William was keeping the grocery around the winter of 1864–65, but that dating is belied by the city directories. W. I. Chase & Co., grocers, is listed only once in Trow’s New York City Directory, for the year ending May 1, 1860.
45. “The Jumel estate case.”
46. MJM 98.13, Nelson Chase to Samuel J. Tilden, Esq.
CHAPTER 37: PROLIFERATING PRETENDERS
1. “The Jumel will case,” New-York Tribune, January 25, 1868, 7; “The Jumel estate—card from Mr. Nelson Chase,” New York Times, February 1, 1868.
2. Irving Browne, “Count Johannes,” The Green Bag 8, no. 11 (November 1896): 435–39; Willis Steell, “Acting ‘Hamlet’ behind a net,” The Theater 10, no. 103 (September 1909): 80.
3. “The Jumel estate, New York Herald, October 23, 1870, 10; Browne, “Count Johannes,” 436; “The Jumel estate,” New York Herald, October 22, 1870, 8.
4. “The Jumel estate,” New York Herald, October 22, 1870, 8.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. “The Jumel estate,” New York Herald, October 23, 1870, 10.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.; “The Jumel estate, New York Herald, October 22, 1870, 8.
11. “The Jumel estate,” New York Herald, October 23, 1870, 10.
12. “Law reports,” New York Times, October 22, 1870, 3.
13. 3-466, deposition of Ellen Bullock.
14. 3-466, deposition of John Bullock.
15. Ibid.
16. 3-312, deposition of John Hicks Bullock.
17. 3-466, deposition of John Bullock.
18. 3-312, deposition of John Hicks Bullock.
19. 3-466, deposition of Juliana Pearce.
20. 3-312, deposition of John Hicks Bullock.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.; 3-466, deposition of John Bullock.
23. 3-466, cross-interrogatory that was intended to be addressed to Elizabeth Salisbury (but not posed because of her sudden illness).
24. 3-466, deposition of Elizabeth Salisbury.
25. Ibid.
26. “The courts,” New York Herald, April 23, 1871, 10.
CHAPTER 38: ENTER GEORGE WASHINGTON
1. “The Jumel estate. Further testimony on behalf of the supposed son of Mme. Jumel,” New York Times, March 21, 1871, 8.
2. J. W. Gerard Jr., Titles to real estate in the State of New York: A digested compendium of law applicable to the examination of titles … (New York: Baker, Voorhis & Co., 1869), 118, 123. The law was limited in its scope. Although an illegitimate child was eligible to inherit from an intestate mother, the privilege stopped with the child. His or her descendants were not legal heirs in cases of intestacy; see chap. 36, n. 8.
3. “The Jumel estate. Further testimony on behalf of the supposed son of Mme. Jumel.”
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ballou, Elaborate History, 85, 202, 218–19; see chap. 6, n. 21.
7. TCMR 6:334–35.
8. Rhode Island State Archives, Providence County Jail, Gaol Book, December 1789–April 1794, entry for December 22, 1792.
9. TCMR 6:334–35, 338, 346; “The courts,” New York Herald, February 13, 1872, 8.
10. TCMR 7:404; Linda L. Mathew, “Gleanings from Rhode Island town records: Providence Town Counsel Records, 1789–1801,” Rhode Island Roots, Special Bonus Issue 2007 (April 2007): 91–92, 97, 101.
11. TCMR 8:171.
12. TCMR 8:258.
13. “Scandalum magnatum,” Albany Argus, March 28, 1871, [1].
14. Ibid.; “The courts,” New York Herald, February 10, 1872, 11.
15. “The courts,” New York Herald, February 10, 1872, 11.
16. “The Jumel estate. Further testimony on behalf of the supposed son of Mme. Jumel.”
17. “Madame Jumel’s millions,” Albany Argus, January 27, 1871, [2] (for all quotations in the paragraph).
18. Ibid.
19. “The courts,” New York Herald, January 27, 1872, 11; “The courts,” New York Herald, March 16, 1872, 11.
20. “The courts,” New York Herald, February 17, 1872, 11; February 23, 1872, 11; and March 15, 1872, 8; 1873 Transcript of Record, 220.
21. Ibid.
22. “The courts,” New York Herald, February 6, 1872, 5; “The courts,” New York Herald, January 25, 1872, 11; “The courts,” New York Herald, March 16, 1872, 11; 1873 Transcript of Record, 246–47. Among those who testified for George Washington Bowen were Elizabeth Price and Margaret A. Stanton, daughters of Solomon Northrup (author of the memoir Twelve Years a Slave, which detailed his captivity after being kidnapped from Saratoga Springs in 1841). Additionally, their mother Anne Northrup gave a deposition for Bowen. According to the statements by these members of the Northrup family, Eliza took Elizabeth, then a young girl, to work for her shortly after the kidnapping; placed Margaret, also a child, with Mary Chase; and briefly had Anne working for her as well. Eliza was claimed to have spoken of having a son on one occasion to Anne, on a second occasion to Elizabeth in Anne’s presence, and on a third occasion to Elizabeth and Margaret, temporarily both at the mansion. However, much of the relevant testimony was suspiciously vague, and there is no indication that Anne (or her son Alonzo, also briefly mentioned) ever worked at the mansion, or that Elizabeth and Margaret were ever there together. It is possible, however, that Elizabeth worked briefly for Eliza and Margaret for Mary Chase and then were sent back to Saratoga. Most of the individuals who testified for Bowen had some grounds for disgruntlement with Eliza, and the Northrop girls’ time with her may not have been happy. The main source for the testimony by Northrop family members is the 1873 Transcript of Record, 246–50.
23. “The courts,” New York Herald, February 23, 1872, 8.
24. “The Jumel estate. Further testimony on behalf of the supposed son of Mme. Jumel.”
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid.
27. “The courts,” New York Herald, February 27, 1872, 5.
28. “An interesting episode in Rhode Island history,” Providence Evening Press, January 25, 1872, [2].
29. “The courts,” New York Herald, March 15, 1872, [8].
30. “Personal, political, and general,” New York Times, March 30, 1871, 2.
31. “The Jumel estate—Gen. Washington not Bowen’s father,” Providence Evening Press, March 31, 1871, [2]; “An interesting episode in Rhode Island history.”
32. “The courts,” New York Herald, February 7, 1
872, 8.
33. New York Times, January 27, 1872, 8.
34. “The courts,” New York Herald, February 16, 1872, 11; “The courts,” New York Herald, February 17, 1872, 11.
35. “The courts,” New York Herald, February 14, 1872, [8].
36. “The Jumel estate—Gen. Washington not Bowen’s father”; “The Jumel estate—further testimony, New York Times, March 29, 1871; “The Jumel estate. Further testimony on behalf of the supposed son of Mme. Jumel,” New York Times, March 21, 1871; “The Jumel estate—further testimony,” New York Times, March 22, 1871.
37. “The Jumel estate,” New York Times, March 25, 1871.
38. “The courts,” New York Herald, February 17, 1872, 11; February 23, 1872, 11; March 15, 1872, 8.
39. “The courts,” New York Herald, March 16, 1872, 11. This was not even Bowen’s first attempt at obtaining a share of the Jumel estate. He was one of the claimants in the suit brought by the descendants of James Bowen, before pursuing his own case on the grounds that he was Eliza’s son. See “Law reports,” New York Times, February 22, 1870, 3; and also 3-312 for the names of the thirty-three plaintiffs in the former suit, a “George W. Bowen” among them.
40. “An interesting episode in Rhode Island history.”
41. “The courts,” New York Herald, March 17, 1872, 10.
42. 3-466, notice from Commissioner Metcalf to James C. Carter, Esq., of the examination of Henry Nodine as a witness.
43. 3-466, deposition of Henry Nodine.
44. Ibid.
45. “A scene at Saratoga,” Alexandria Gazette, September 8, 1846, [2].
46. “The Jumel estate case, New York Herald, January 15, 1873, 8; 3-466, deposition of Henry Nodine. Pension records show that his brothers served in the militia, but he did not. See Ancestry.com, War of 1812 Pension Application Files Index, 1812–1815 [database online] (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010). Nodine gave his age as fourty-eight in the 1850 census and as sixty in the 1860 census, making him only ten or twelve years old at the outbreak of the War of 1812 (see the 1850 and 1860 United States Federal Census databases in Ancestry.com).
47. NYHS-JP, box 1, folder 1, Eliza Jumel to Stephen Jumel, received October 4, 1826; N.Y. Ct. Com. Pl., Stephen Jumel vs. Lewis Nodine and Peter Nodine, 1824-#292.
The Remarkable Rise of Eliza Jumel Page 35
