Whiskey Men & Family Feuds II

   

Foreword:  In this my second compilation of family feuds, I feel compelled to note that for every story of discord among families involved in making or selling whiskey, there are at least a dozen instances of families working together to achieve success.  Regrettably, circumstances sometimes can lead to internecine disputes.  In the three vignettes to follow, the individual causes might be abbreviated as “money, marriage, and murder.”  In truth, avarice might be seen as the root of all of them.

Edward Penton Middleton, whose graveyard bust is shown here, was an extremely wealthy man whose major source of funds came from selling whiskey and other alcoholic beverages in Philadelphia.  A man with an aggressive personality and accustomed to having his way, Middleton in 1864 split with his brother after 20 profitable years of running a liquor house. 

The separation was far from amicable.  Witnesses later would testify that the brothers not only argued but that George Middleton had threatened Edward with “personal violence” and the two had become permanently estranged.  George set up a liquor store of his own in direct competition with Edward.  When he died in 1886, Edward exacted his revenge.

Edward had never married and if he had died intestate his fortune would have been divided equally among his surviving three brothers and three sisters, each of whom might have expected a sixth of a substantial fortune.  But Middleton had made a will, kept in a safety deposit box at a local bank.  In court a bank executive testified that Edward had anticipated that his will would be controversial, telling him that the document would cause “a high old time after my death.”  In it Middleton gave substantial but not whopping amounts to five sisters and brothers.  George got nary a cent.  By far the largest bequest, equivalent to roughly $10 million today, went to a nephew, Charles D. Middleton, a paper hanger by occupation. 

George Middleton, backed by other siblings, upon the reading of Edward’s last will and testament immediately hollered fraud.  A jury trial ensued in Federal Court that lasted the greater part of five weeks as dozens of witnesses were heard.  Several testified to Edward Middleton’s special affection for his nephew, pointing out that he had paid for Charles’ support and education after the boy’s mother and father died, had financed his paper hanging business, and considered Charles “the only man in the family who took care of himself.”  After a lengthy instruction from the judge, the jury retired but quickly brought its verdict: The will was legitimate.  

Made a rich man overnight, Charles exited paper hanging.  The 1880 census gave the 42-year old heir’s occupation as “gentleman,” i.e. no longer needing to work for a living.  Charles now was living in a mansion home.  In addition to his wife and two children, his household included his mother, mother-in-law, and four live-in servants, including a chambermaid, cook, gardener and coachman.  Charles, as Uncle Edward had anticipated, knew how to take care of himself.

Established in America by early colonist John Bellows in 1635, the Bellows family became one of the country’s historic clans, a close knit group with a motto meaning “All from On High” and a crest of a disembodied hand pouring something into a goblet.  It ironically might have been whiskey, the liquid that led to the unfortunate unraveling of the family of Charles Bellows, who owned a well-known liquor house in New York City.  Bellows Monogram Rye was his flagship brand.

Marriage was key to the discord.  Charles and his first wife, Eliza Delano, had only one child, a son born in 1852 whom they named Charles after his father. Eliza proved to be of frail health and after only thirteen years of marriage, she died in April, 1861.  After waiting the obligatory year and few days after her death Charles married again.  This time his bride was Eliza’s older sister, Mary Ellen  That is when the family ties began to unravel.  Charles Jr., age 14, now was faced with a stepmother who also was his aunt.  Moreover, Charles and Mary would have three additional sons.  Charles Jr. may well have felt himself the “odd man out” of the family.

During a period when Bellows was suffering business reverses, Charles Jr., now grown, shown here, joined his father for a dozen years in rebuilding a successful liquor house.  Then Charles Sr. died in March 1890 at the age of 65, willing the business to his wife.  Tasked with managing the liquor house,  Charles Jr. after several months asked his stepmother to let him buy the store outright.  Mary Ellen refused.   By this time her sons were grown and had worked in the firm.  The mother wanted her boys to have the company.  In 1891 she assigned it to her sons, Arthur and Clarence, leaving out Charles Jr. out in the cold.

The crack in the Bellows family was now irreparable.  Charles Jr., clearly disappointed and angry, set up his own wine and liquor establishment, opening at  42 Broad Street, immediately next door to the original Bellows establishment and in direct competition.  Subsequently Charles Jr. sued Arthur and Clarence claiming that his liquor enterprise was the successor to the firm of Charles Bellows and exclusively was entitled to the use of the name.  Moreover, he charged, the continued use of the founder’s name on his half-brothers’ business was a fraud on the public.  The presiding judge disagreed, ruling:  “There is no fraud practiced upon the public or the plaintiff.”  He then dismissed Charles Jr.’s suit and charged him court costs.

The Bellows family rift continued even unto death.  Both Arthur and Clarence are buried adjacent to their father, Charles, in the Bellows family plot. Charles Jr. is buried elsewhere, outside the family circle.

The third family feud made newspaper headlines from Bridgeport, Connecticut, to San Bernardino, California.   Across America people knew that two sons of Peter Dorsheimer, a former prominent Lancaster, Pennsylvania, liquor wholesaler, had been jailed, accused by a third son of having murdered their father and mother 14 years earlier while making it look like an accident.  Until then, the public face of the Dorsheimers was of a happy family of solid Pennsylvania stock, high achieving and affluent, civically and politically active, and strong adherents to the German Reformed Christian Church.  Whatever tensions roiled beneath the surface had gone unnoticed.  

On April 16, 1910, tragedy had struck the Dorsheimers.  Peter, shown here, and his wife were found dead in their bed, asphyxiated by illuminating gas from a fixture in their bedroom. The flame had been extinguished but the deadly gas continued to flow.  The decision of the coroner, backed by the sheriff, was accidental death.  The theory as was that an errant piece of clothing from one of the two had brushed against the jet, blowing out the flame, and the couple had not noticed.   

Fast forward 14 years:  Chester A. and Benjamin Dorsheimer, were arrested and jailed in Lancaster County on an allegation that they had murdered their mother and father on that April night as a way to get control of the lucrative liquor business.  The accuser was their brother, Frank, abetted by a sister, Lizzie. Shown here, Frank also found a sympathetic ear in a rural justice of the peace with the power to incarcerate. 

Shown here, the brothers (Chester left) spent seven days languishing in jail.  At last a county judge held a hearing that included evidence that the door to Peter and Anna’s bedroom had been locked from the inside, making it impossible for someone to slip in and blow out the gas jet while they were sleeping.  He ordered Benjamin and Chester immediately released, ending their ordeal.  In the process, however, the Dorsheimer family circle that once had looked so strong had been broken and likely irreparably so.

Note:  More complete stories of each of these families may be found on this blog at the following dates:  Middleton, January 13, 2019;  Bellows, December 8, 2019, and Dorsheimer, March 23, 1917.  My thanks to Lisa Dorsheimer Procaccini for the photos of her ancestors.  The first post on family feuds ran on December 21, 2019.