The Remarkable Rise of Eliza Jumel (45 page)

During the years that Eliza's reputation was blighted, first by George Washington Bowen and then by the French heirs, her family fought
back by romanticizing her life as vividly as she had done herself. By the early 1870s, Nelson and his daughter, Eliza Pery, were disseminating the tale that Stephen had offered Napoleon I a ship on which to escape to America.
³⁹
They endowed the old Jumel mansion with distinguished guests as well. Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand, the marquis de Lafayette, and King Louis-Philippe (before ascending the throne) were among the notables who, in their telling, had stepped within its gates.
⁴⁰
The legend that Eliza and Stephen had socialized with French émigrés during the early years of their marriage originated with Nelson and his daughter too.
⁴¹

Eliza's furnishings were given distinguished, if imaginary, histories. “A silver tea service, which once graced the table of Marie Antoinette, and a bit of tapestry wrought by the fingers of the Empress Josephine” were displayed in the Octagon Parlor of the mansion near vases, tables, and a chandelier allegedly owned by General Moreau.
⁴²
Other treasures of the mansion included Eliza's bed, said to have belonged to Napoleon I when he was First Consul, and a sofa purportedly from the palace of Charles X.
⁴³
In the hallway was a chess table “at which Louis Napoleon [Napoleon III] liked to play with Madame Jumel.”
⁴⁴

In anticipation of the moment when the Jumel lands could be sold, Nelson bolstered the value of the estate by leaking information to the newspapers about ostensibly interested purchasers. Supposedly Napoleon III had been negotiating for the Jumel estate during the Franco-Prussian War “to use for a residence in case of his being dethroned.”
⁴⁵
He was forced into exile in 1870, after the Battle of Sedan, but “the loss of much of his wealth by the war forced him to look for a retreat of more moderate dimensions.”
⁴⁶
Subsequently ex– Queen Christina of Spain began bargaining for the property, or so the story went.
⁴⁷
None of these reports had a basis in fact, any more than the stories told about Eliza's home furnishings.

The settlements with the French heirs ended much of the drama. The Jumel estate was sold off in well-attended auctions in 1882, 1886, and 1888.
⁴⁸
Nelson and his daughter bought the mansion and the homestead lot. They and their spouses and young Raymond Chase
went on sharing the premises until 1887.
⁴⁹
Hattie's sister, Lizzie Dunning, lived with them until her marriage in 1886.
⁵⁰
Although the French heirs continued to fight with their lawyers, the Chases and Caryls, free from the shadow of the courthouse, settled into quiet retirement.

“For it is a peculiarity of these long-winded cases that they are as nearly immortal as anything mortal can be.”
—“The Jumel jumble,”
New-York Tribune
, April 4, 1877

I
n 1887 the Chases and the Caryls sold the Jumel mansion and the remaining acreage surrounding it.
¹
Eliza and Julius moved to Yonkers. They spent their summers in Saratoga Springs, occupying Madame Jumel's former home.
²

Nelson, Hattie, and Raymond relocated to Ridgewood, New Jersey, where Nelson died in 1890.
³
Raymond fell into bad company. One of his friends was James Tynan, whose father claimed to have been complicit in the politically motivated assassinations of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Henry Burke, the British secretary and undersecretary for Ireland.
⁴
At seventeen, Raymond accused his widowed mother, Hattie, of adultery with his uncle, Lizzie's husband, and claimed that his uncle had withheld Raymond's share of the Jumel fortune.
⁵
Two years later, Raymond died of Pott's disease, a complication of tuberculosis.
⁶

Eliza Caryl lived to be eighty years old, guarding her great-aunt's relics and reputation until her own death in 1915.
⁷
Her husband predeceased her, dying in 1911. He left all of his property to her—although one of his nephews challenged the will.
⁸

Two years before Eliza Caryl's death, her granddaughter Agnes Gourreau, one of four children born to Mathilde, came from Bordeaux to tend her.
⁹
Eleven months after her grandmother's decease, Agnes married Dr. J. Wade Hampton, the scion of a wealthy southern family.
¹⁰

Jane McManus, Aaron Burr's alleged lover in the Jumel divorce case, found her reputation permanently stained. In 1837 she was named the respondent in yet another divorce action.
¹¹
Her ill repute made her an easy target, but she was probably blameless in that particular case. Subsequently she became a journalist and author. In an 1845 article advocating the annexation of Texas to the United States, she coined the now-famous phrase “manifest destiny.” The fact that she was the first to use the term was only rediscovered at the end of the twentieth century.
¹²

George Washington Bowen died in 1885 at the age of ninety.
¹³
He assigned his claim to the Jumel fortune to John R. Vandervoort, a relative of the Anne Vandervoort who had borne witness for him.
¹⁴
This newest aspirant to the fabled millions donated land from the estate to several philanthropic institutions in order to promote his supposed acquisition. But the coordinates of the plots proved difficult to pinpoint. Although they were located “in a part of the city where land is worth almost as much as good gold ore,” whether they were “below the ground, or … raised some two feet in the air,” the donor failed to say.
¹⁵

Shortly before Vandervoort died in 1903, he sold his claim to James Wallace Tygard of Netherwood, New Jersey.
¹⁶
Politely Tygard notified the mayor of New York City of his “title” to the Jumel property—including as-yet-unearthed Napoleonic relics that he claimed Eliza had buried on her lands.
¹⁷
Six months later he and a friend were arrested in a sting operation, after contracting to sell a
lot that was once part of the Jumel estate. It was already owned by someone else.
¹⁸

Eliza's old home became a museum in 1907.
¹⁹
Today it is known as the Morris-Jumel Mansion, commemorating Roger and Mary Morris, the couple who built it, and Eliza Jumel, its most famous occupant. Eliza Caryl preserved the furnishings that her great-aunt and Stephen had purchased for the house. After she died in 1915, the most important pieces were acquired for the museum.
²⁰
They can be admired at the Morris-Jumel Mansion to this day.

Eliza's reputation is not as well preserved as her furniture. The lies told by those who sought her fortune turned her into a prostitute, the mother of an illegitimate son, a cruel wife, even the murderer of her husband. She deserves better. Although Eliza was in some ways a difficult woman, her determination, intelligence, and strength of character were what allowed her to survive and thrive in spite of the disadvantages of her youth. The affection of her niece and great-niece testify to her ability to form loving bonds.

Her contemporaries would have been less disturbed by her ascent into the upper middle class had she been a more conventional “womanly” woman—a lady who hid her emotions and ambitions beneath a veneer of delicacy, gentleness, and charm. That was not a façade Eliza could maintain for long. But on her own terms, she achieved much: financial security, a certain social status, a landed estate, an elegant home staffed with servants. She rose far above the social class to which she was born, attaining the upward mobility thought to exemplify the American experience, but in reality so hard to achieve. The stories told about her are less dramatic in the end than the life she composed and acted for herself.

I
am deeply grateful to the staff of the many archives, libraries, and museums where I conducted my research for accommodating my endless requests for manuscripts and books. I would like to single out for special mention the New-York Historical Society, the New York Public Library, and the Division of Old Records of the New York County Clerk's Office. I spent many months delving into the collections of each of these institutions.

Without the following people, who offered special assistance in many and various ways, I could not have completed this project: Bruce Abrams, Archivist (retired), Division of Old Records, New York County Clerk's Office; Cherry Fletcher Bamberg, FASG; Jessica Becker, Public Services, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library; Teri Blasko, Local History Librarian, Saratoga Springs Public Library; Paul Campbell, City Archivist, Providence City Hall; Ken Carlson, Reference Archivist, Rhode Island State Archives; Sofie Church, Junior Cataloguer, Sotheby's Old Master Paintings, London; Tracy L. Croce, Local Government Records Analyst, Rhode Island State Archives; Robert Delap, Assistant, Department of Rights and Reproductions, New-York Historical Society; Lindsey Felice, Special Collections and Preservation
Assistant, Oberlin College Library; Christine Filippelli, Head of Adult Services, Troy Public Library; Peter Flass; Françoise Hack, Assistant Director Collections, John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art; Agnes Hamberger, Saratoga Springs History Museum; Tammy Kiter, Manuscript Reference Librarian, New-York Historical Society Museum and Library; Colette Lamothe; Thomas Lannon, Assistant Curator, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library; Joseph Lapinski, Assistant Archivist, Trinity Wall Street Archives; Daniel Legatino, Trinity Cemetery and Mausoleum; Laura K. O'Keefe, Head of Cataloging and Special Collections, New York Society Library; Brigitte Pallas, Médiatrice culturelle et agent de traitement des fonds, Archives départementales, Conseil général des Landes; Anne Petrimoulx, Archivist, Trinity Wall Street Archives; Erin Schreiner, Special Collections Librarian, New York Society Library; Barbara Sicko, Registrar, Bob Jones University Museum & Gallery; Andrew Smith, Administrative Assistant, Rhode Island Supreme Court Judicial Records Center; Matthew Spady; Gabriel Swift, Reference Librarian, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library; Joseph Van Nostrand, Archivist in Charge, Division of Old Records, New York County Clerk's Office; Suzanne Wray; Liz Zanis, Collections Management Assistant, Department of Drawings and Prints, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Databases rarely receive special credit in acknowledgments, but I must tip a hat to Readex's
America's Historical Newspapers
database. Without the full-text access that it provides to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American newspapers, the research for this book would have been vastly more time-consuming. I also made good use of
ProQuest Historical Newspapers
.

I owe a considerable debt to two prior biographers of Eliza Jumel. William H. Shelton, Civil War veteran and original curator of the Morris-Jumel Mansion, offered the first extended biographical treatment of Eliza within a book devoted to the mansion's history.
¹
He knew a good story when he heard one, and the narrative he fashioned of Eliza's life—legends and all—remains the
dominant version today. Constance M. Greiff produced the first modern, scholarly analysis of Eliza, as part of a report she prepared for the Morris-Jumel Mansion.
²
Her study provided my first introduction to the real Eliza and the cornerstone for my research.

I sincerely appreciate the support of the Morris-Jumel Mansion staff, including director Carol S. Ward, curator Jasmine Helm, archivist Emilie Lauren Gruchow, and former director Ken Moss. They permitted me to spend many happy hours rooting about in the mansion's archives; provided access to objects in the collection; and supplied a rich selection of images for this book. In addition, Emilie supplied a crucial need by photographing Eliza's hands from the Jumel family portrait—the handsome detail that appears on the book's cover. Trish Mayo, also at the Morris-Jumel Mansion, not only shared her own photographs of the family portrait, but also braved unseasonably cold weather to shoot a beautiful selection of images of the Jumel crypt.

Barbara Breen has my eternal gratitude for being kind enough to read the entire manuscript as I was racing to finish it. She gave me excellent feedback and welcome encouragement during those last, agonizing stages of the project. Michelle Williams, Developmental Editor at Chicago Review Press, kept the production process running smoothly, despite the challenges posed by a manuscript heavily freighted with sixty-plus pages of endnotes.

My special thanks to agent Malaga Baldi for finding the book a home, and to Lisa Reardon, Senior Editor at Chicago Review Press, for seeing the promise in a working manuscript that was in far from finished form.

T
his book makes heavy use of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century newspapers and manuscript material. I have slightly modernized the original punctuation for easier reading. Dashes used to terminate sentences (an accepted practice well into the nineteenth century) are replaced by periods, and the placement of commas and semicolons has been adjusted to follow modern American usage. Translations from French are mine unless otherwise indicated.

I made silent corrections of typographical errors in newspaper articles and of misspelled words in handwritten depositions. If necessary punctuation was missing, I added it. In quoting from legal testimony reported in the newspapers, if a witness's words were run together with sentences separated by semicolons, I used periods to divide them instead. Throughout the book, estimates of what a given sum of money would be worth today were generated using the simple purchasing power calculator available at
MeasuringWorth.com
(
www.measuringworth.com/ppowerus
).