Augustus Goodwin and a Wife’s Yen for Royalty

 Augustus Franklin Goodwin was a wealthy Boston merchant, CEO of a large chain of specialty grocery stores that featured at least thirteen brands of his proprietary whiskey.  Despite his success, Augustus found his socialite wife enamored of European royalty to the point of dumping him for a hereditary count.  The photo here is of Frances Thorley Goodwin, subsequently known widely to New York society as “Countess von der Palen-Klar,” a designation as questionable as the origins of her second husband’s title.

Unlike most of the “whiskey men” whose stories are told on this site, Goodwin was born into wealth and privilege.  His father, Manning Goodwin, was a gentleman farmer and merchant in New York.  Augustus, an only son, was given a good education and set on a vocational path as a businessman.  Early in his career, he became engaged to Frances Thorley, the daughter of Charles and Mary Thorley, a wealthy family living at a fashionable address on upper 72nd Street, Manhattan.

When Augustus and Frances wed the newspaper record of their nuptials described the extravagant nature of the occasion, reporting:  “The bride who was given away by her father, wore a white satin gown, with court train, and bodice and sleeves of Brussels point lace  Her diamond necklace was a gift of her father….Mrs. [Mary] Thorley was in white silk,embroidered and wore emerald and diamond ornaments.”  A mere 800 guests attended the reception following the wedding. 

 

A rising star in the East Coast business world, Goodwin was tapped to be the president of a speciality grocery chain in Boston called the Ginter Company.  A 1901 city directory listed three locations in the city, 236 Tremont, 2 Union and 163 Summer.  Under Goodwin’s guiding hand by 1905 the number of Ginter stores had risen to five in Boston and a sixth outlet in nearby Roxbury, Mass.  By 1915 the company would boast 14 stores in Boston proper and a similar number in the suburbs.

A key to Goodwin’s strategy for expansion and success was selling liquor under proprietary labels.  They included the following whiskeys:  "Actor Rye,” “Aquinas,”  “Banquet,”  ”Benton Rye,” "Glen Adir,” “Harlequin,” "Kangaroo Rye,” “Mentor,” “Promenade,” "Radcliffe Rye,” "Royal Wikstaf,” ”Sexton Rye,” "Sonata Rye,” and "Westford Rye.”  Unlike other liquor sellers, Goodwin trademarked a number of his most popular labels.  After Congress tightened the trademark laws in 1904, he registered Promenade Whiskey in 1905;  Harlequin, Mentor, and Royal Wikstaf in 1906, and Glen Adir in 1907.

Goodwin’s Ginter Company did not own a distillery but may have been dictating recipes to “captive” distilleries that contracted their entire output to the Boston chain.  Ginter likely was receiving the product by the barrel and devising the labels for the brands.  The bottling might have been done “in house” or contracted out.  So long as supplies of liquor were adequate to meet sales demands, the system was efficient and resulted in considerable profits.  Shown below are Ginter Co. ceramic jugs that also likely carried whiskey.

Coming from a Manhattan society background Frances Goodwin may have found Boston too provincial to her taste and chafed to return to “The Big Apple.”  After the birth of the Goodwins’ first and only child in 1909,  Augustus, perhaps as a way of mollifying his wife, agreed to a major remodeling of their mansion home at 130 Commonwealth Avenue, in one of Boston’s most elegant neighborhoods.  

The costly remodeling included rebuilding the front façade in a Beaux Arts design, eliminating a bay window to the east of the former entrance, and centering the entrance.  Significant interior remodeling adjusted floor levels and modified room arrangements.  Shown here are plans for the remodeling and the building as it looks today.  

Despite her husband’s exertions Frances was not satisfied.  She had developed a yen for royalty in the person of Count Adolphe J. von der Palen-Klar, living in Brooklyn, possibly under modest circumstances.  Adolphe’s family is said to have achieved nobility in 1799 when Emperor Paul the First of Russia, for reasons unknown, gave Peter Ludwig von der Pahlen and all of his descendants the rank of count.  Some members of the family also emigrated to Sweden where they formed part of  “unintroduced” nobility," i.e.. second class royals.  Adolphe inherited the family coat of arms, a somewhat chaotic design perhaps indicating a complicated ancestry.  How the Count got to Brooklyn and what he did there mattered little to Frances who had enough family money for them both.  

She divorced Augustus and subsequently married Adolphe on November 16, 1927 at the American Church in Paris, France.   After a honeymoon they returned to live in New York.  Frances quickly snatched onto the title of “countess,” however murky its origins.   Adolphe moved out of Brooklyn for lodgings with his new wife at one of upper Manhattan’s swankiest buildings, 920 Fifth Avenue.  Shown here, this limestone-clad building in the Italian palazzo-style, was designed by the noted luxury apartment architect J.E.R Carpenter and constructed in 1922.  It became the residence of movie star Gloria Swanson and other notables. Today a condo apartment there costs in excess of $13 million — no mortgages, thank you, just cash on the barrelhead. 

New York newspapers frequently ran items recounting the couple’s activities: “Count and Countess Adophe J. Von Der Palen-Klar gave a dinner last week at their home, 920 Fifth Avenue, in honor of the Grand Duke Boris of Russia, first cousin of the late Tsar, and the Grand Duchess.” “Count and Countess Adolphe J. Palen-Klar gave a dinner last evening at the Regis roof garden….”“[Four names]…were among the luncheon guests of Countess Adolphe J. von der Palen-Klar at the Ritz Carlton yesterday.”  Now clothed in royalty, Frances Thorley had arrived at the pinnacle of Gotham’s social set.

Meanwhile back in Boston, Augustus Goodwin was busy running the Ginter Company and indulging his hobby as an owner/breeder of thoroughbred racehorses, including the steeplechase jumper shown above.  He also found a second wife.  She was Julia E. Folsom, a Massachusetts-born woman six years younger than he.  Julie had had an earlier marriage and a child.  The 1930 federal census found the couple and the daughters of each living together in Hamilton, a rural suburb of Boston.   Shown here, Julia has the look of someone willing to abide a rich husband without a title.

Augustus Goodwin by that time likely had retired from the Ginter Company. In 1925 the business had merged with two other outfits to form a major new grocery chain known as First National Grocery, with stores spread throughout New England and into New York State.  Moreover, the advent of National Prohibition had ended all sales of alcohol and the whiskey brands that Goodwin had so carefully nurtured would be heard from no more.  

Goodwin’s love for horses was his undoing.  In July 1934, he dressed in his riding outfit and drove from his Hamilton home to the nearby stables where he kept his horses, mounted one and rode off.  Somewhere along his journey the horse threw him to the ground.  Goodwin may have died almost instantly.  The cause was recorded as “fracture at base of skull.”  Age 61, Augustus was buried in the Hamilton Cemetery.  Julia died in 1951 and lies an adjacent grave.

In New York,  the countess died in 1944.  The count followed four years later.  Both are interred in the Von der Palen-Klar mausoleum at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.  Thus ended the saga of a Boston grocer and whiskey merchant and his errant wife who fancied a title more than tea bags and royalty over rye whiskey.

Note:  This post was gathered from a wide range of sources. Of major importance were genealogical sites.  Photos were gleaned from the Internet.  As often occurs, it was seeing Gintner Company whiskey bottles that sent me on a search for their origin and finding Augustus Goodwin and the Countess.