A Secret Life: The Lies and Scandals of President Grover Cleveland

by Charles Lachman

Mrs. Kendall met Maria Halpin once, when Dr. King instructed her to bring the baby to Grover Cleveland’s law offices (see Prologue). Mrs. Kendall was dismayed to see her brother-in-law joking and in cahoots with this Grover Cleveland while Maria Halpin stood there in tears. Mrs. Kendall also got the strong impression that some kind of business transaction was being conducted between Cleveland, King, and Maria.

  Mrs. Kendall returned home with Oscar, or Jack, as she continued to call him. For the next year, she nursed and raised the boy. One day, a gift arrived for him—a tiny pair of cotton stockings, knitted by Maria Halpin for her son. Attached to the stockings was a personal note from Maria, addressed to Minnie Kendall. A short time later, another gift was delivered, a strange one: a little knit cap with a photo of a man inside that looked like Grover Cleveland. When Mrs. Kendall removed the picture from the cap, she saw that two words had been written on the back: “Baby’s papa.”

  Another full year passed. Then came the news that Mrs. Kendall had feared. Dr. James E. King and his wife Sarah Kendall King once again appeared at Minnie Kendall’s apartment on Union Street in a state of “alarm” and frantic haste. The baby was being returned to Maria Halpin. They told Mrs. Kendall to gather all of Jack’s things in a hurry. Everything had been arranged, and it had to be done right now. Maria was expecting her. She would be waiting for Mrs. Kendall outside her apartment. The transfer of the baby must take place outdoors, Mrs. Kendall was informed. On no account was she to enter the building. “It was a bad house,” she was told.

  “They cautioned me on this point over and over again,” Mrs. Kendall said. There was one other important set of instructions. Under no circumstances, she was warned, could she let Maria know where she lived or where the baby had been raised the past year.

  Mrs. Kendall and the child stepped into a waiting carriage. A driver, hired by Dr. King, took the carriage along a deliberately circuitous route to an address deep in the city. Apparently, for whatever reason, Dr. King was trying to keep his sister-in-law from remembering where she was going or how she got there. When Mrs. Kendall finally reached her destination, she learned it was Maria Halpin’s apartment, at 11 East Genesee Street. An elderly woman came out of the building—it may have been Maria’s neighbor, Mrs. Baker—and told Mrs. Kendall to bring the baby in. Maria was expecting her.

  “Dr. King told me not to go in,” Mrs. Kendall dutifully replied.

  The woman returned to the apartment to consult with Maria Halpin, and when she came out several minutes later, she said, “You must carry the child in and place it in its mother’s arms.”

  Mrs. Kendall thought it through and decided she had to ignore Dr. King’s instructions and go along with Maria’s demands.

  Carrying Jack, Mrs. Kendall entered the “bad house” and found waiting for her the woman she had first encountered in Grover Cleveland’s office. Mrs. Kendall was struck by Maria’s physical beauty. She was very “ladylike,” and she still had her figure. She was also weeping hysterically.

  “Are you the baby’s mother?”

  “Yes,” she answered. “I am Maria Halpin, the baby’s own mother.”

  Maria took the child from Mrs. Kendall and held Oscar Folsom Cleveland in her arms, hugging and kissing him. She could not stop crying, and the child became alarmed by her behavior. After all, she was a stranger to him, and he was old enough to sense something was wrong. Mrs. Kendall took Oscar back and gave him her breast, which quieted down the fretful little fellow. Maria took everything in—this woman was nursing her biological son, and it must have hit her hard. She insisted that Mrs. Kendall tell her where she lived. But Mrs. Kendall stayed true to her word to Dr. King.

  Suddenly, Maria began to spew venom—aimed not at Mrs. Kendall but at Grover Cleveland and Dr. James E. King. Her own obstetrician had stolen her baby, Maria declared. King was a “villain.” So was Cleveland (although she never once uttered his name). They were both evil.

  When Maria and Mrs. Kendall parted ways at the door, it seemed that Maria did not bear this woman any ill will. In spite of everything, there was a special bond between them—their shared love for the boy. Maria gave Mrs. Kendall $2 for her troubles. She also tried to give the driver $3 if he would go back to Mrs. Kendall’s house and retrieve Oscar’s cradle, but Mrs. Kendall saw this as a ruse to find out where she lived; so on the way back, she asked the driver not to give Maria any information about her home address. In all his years driving a hack around Buffalo, the driver had never seen anything like what he had just witnessed.

  “My god,” he said, “whose child is that that they are making so much fuss about?”

  Mrs. Kendall said not a word in response. As the driver steered his carriage to Union Street, once again he took a circuitous route so that his passenger could not remember where Maria Halpin lived.

  When Mrs. Kendall arrived home, Dr. King was waiting for her. She briefed him on what had happened. Then the good doctor informed her that it made sense for her family to get out of town.

  “He was very anxious to have us leave Buffalo,” she said. Mrs. Kendall could not believe it. Dr. King was so eager to hasten their departure he announced that he had even found a job for his wife’s brother William Kendall—working for a railroad in Ontario, Canada, of all places. Dr. King could not wait for them to go. “He charged us over and over again never to tell what we knew about Maria Halpin’s child, and used all manner of means to intimidate us and compel us to keep the matter quiet,” said Mrs. Kendall. Still, the Kendalls vacillated. Then one day their apartment was burglarized. All their belongings were turned “topsy-turvy,” and when the Kendalls inventoried everything, they realized that the only items stolen were Baby Jack’s trinkets. These included the little booties Maria had sewn for him and the photo of Grover Cleveland with the words “Baby’s papa” written on the back. That did it. The Kendalls decided for their own personal security that it was time to go. They settled on moving to Concord, New Hampshire, where William and his sister Sarah King had grown up on the family farm. William had found employment there at a wool factory, and Minnie could work part-time at a Concord shoe factory.

  Just before they left, Minnie Kendall and Sarah King got together for a final farewell. By now, the two sisters-in-law were barely speaking to each other. Minnie refused to even call Sarah by her first name; now she was simply “Dr. King’s wife.” Before they parted, Sarah said something that Minnie found haunting and truly unsettling.

  “Maria Halpin has got that child now, but I will get him, and then she will never see him again.”

  Sarah Kendall King was thirty-eight, and had recently suffered a terrible loss—the death of her daughter, Mary, at the age of ten, just seven months before Maria Halpin had given birth. Sarah was now childless. Though Minnie Kendall did not fully understand what was going on, she didn’t want to stay in Buffalo to find out. She wanted to get as far away from these people as she could.

  5

  THE ORPHAN

  IT WAS A Friday afternoon, July 23, 1875, and Oscar Folsom was calling it a day. His wife, Emma, and daughter, Frances, were out of town, vacationing for the summer with Emma’s mother in Medina, New York. Just two days earlier, Frances had turned eleven.

  Folsom climbed into his buggy. With him was his friend, the lawyer Warren F. Miller. Folsom steered his mare, White Cloud, down the river road and came to a stop when he reached the home of Charles E. Bacon, a wealthy Buffalo businessman. The trio spent about four hours socializing and drinking. Then, around eight at night, it was time to go.

  Folsom climbed into the right-hand seat and took the reins while Miller got in from the other side. Lickety-split, Folsom drove up Amherst Street and was just turning the corner at Niagara when he saw a streetcar up ahead. A sensible man would have slowed down, but Folsom flicked White Cloud’s reins to try to pass the streetcar on the right. The buggy’s rear wheel hit a farmer’s wagon parked in front of a saloon, and Folsom was thrown from the buggy headfirst. When he landed, the rear wheel of his own carr
iage ran over his chest. Miller grabbed the reins, pulled White Cloud over, and jumped out. He ran to where Folsom was lying, unconscious, on the street. A few men from the large crowd that had gathered carried Folsom to the saloon while Miller got back in the buggy and drove as fast as he could to get help.

  When Miller returned, he had with him Dr. W. C. Phelps, the city’s public health physician. Two other doctors were already examining Folsom when Phelps strode in and took charge. Folsom’s skull was fractured, and he was paralyzed from the neck down. His condition was mortal.

  When news of Folsom’s accident reached him, a shaken Grover Cleveland rushed to his friend’s side. Again and again Cleveland had warned him about his aggressive driving. Now, ten months after Oscar Folsom Cleveland had been born, Cleveland got there in time to see the man his son had been named after take his last breath. It was 9:45 p.m.

  Assembled in the back room of the saloon were Folsom’s cousin Benjamin Folsom and two other well-known lawyers, Henry Box and Charles Thomas. The county coroner was called, and Folsom’s body was lifted into a wagon and transported to the Tifft House, where Folsom had rented an apartment for the summer while his family was away.

  A telegram was sent to Emma Folsom at her mother’s estate in Medina. It arrived after midnight. Frances was immediately awakened and informed of her father’s death. Many years later, she would recall how she sat on the steps in the hallway taking it all in. Her father was gone, and she could see her mother sitting on the porch, reading and rereading the telegram by the light of a lantern. It was as if she could not quite believe what had happened, that at age thirty-three she was now a widow.

  Emma returned to Buffalo the next day and found a city in mourning. Her husband’s accident was the lead local story in the Commercial Advertiser.

  “There is no one among the prominent young men of this community whose death would be more deeply mourned than is that of Oscar Folsom,” the article said, heaping praise on Folsom for being “true as steel to his friends.” The paper also conceded, in so many words, that Folsom had had a reputation for recklessness with a horse and buggy when it took note of his “quick and impulsive” nature. The Morning Express said the city had lost a citizen whose place “cannot be refilled. Oscar had not an enemy in the world.” Of course the tension surrounding the illegitimate birth of Oscar Folsom Cleveland was kept in the strictest privacy. Not a word about it appeared in print. Only the most intimate friends of Grover Cleveland and Maria Halpin knew that the enmity between them was mounting.

  Cleveland was given the honor of delivering the eulogy at Oscar Folsom’s funeral—a stirring address, spoken from the heart, and considered by those who were there to be the greatest speech of his life. Emma was present, as was Folsom’s grieving father, Colonel John Folsom. He had now lost his wife, a daughter, and two sons in the span of just nineteen months. Death seemed to be stalking John Folsom’s family, which had been virtually wiped out by disease and hard luck. The adolescent Frances, who was considered to be too young to attend the funeral, remained in Medina with her grandmother.

  Oscar Folsom left no will—a surprising lapse for someone in the legal profession but characteristic of his irresponsible nature. Dying intestate meant Folsom’s assets had to be processed through probate court, and Grover Cleveland was appointed administrator of the estate. Everyone agreed that Cleveland’s veneration of the dead man and his affection for Emma and Frances Folsom made him the perfect choice.

  Oscar Folsom left a sizable estate of an estimated $250,000, the rough equivalent of $5 million in modern currency. Financially, Emma and Frances had no worries.

  For a time, they stayed in Medina, where Frances continued her education at the Medina Academy for Boys and Girls. Then they tried living with Emma’s sister Nellie in St. Paul, Minnesota, thinking that a new life in another city might be just the thing to cheer them up, but they disliked St. Paul; and six months later, they were back in Medina.

  Grover Cleveland was a continuous presence in Frances’s life. Given that her mother was still alive, the girl did not require a legal guardian, but Cleveland effectively took over that role and was advised on every important aspect of her upbringing. There was talk that Cleveland and Emma were destined to marry. It did seem inevitable that the widow of Oscar Folsom and his bachelor best friend would one day wed.

  Grover Cleveland, however, was in a serious predicament: what to do about Maria Halpin. She was the stone in his shoe that would not go away.

  Oscar Folsom Cleveland was now two and a half years old. After spending the first year of his life in the care of Dr. King’s sister-in-law, Minnie Kendall, Oscar was back living with his mother on East Genesee Street. Maria Halpin had won that skirmish, and Cleveland was realizing that this department store clerk made a formidable foe. She was relentless in pursuing her purpose: to salvage her family name. Remarkably, that meant marrying the man she claimed had raped her. From Maria’s perspective, marriage was the “only step possible to even partially repair the wrong he had done.” Marriage would save her son from shame, relieve her of her “misery,” and eradicate the “stain on her honor.” Maria made one more appeal for Cleveland to do the right thing. Cleveland was unwavering; he said no.

  Cleveland’s communications with Maria were thorny at best; at times he even interpreted her statements to be threats to his life and the boy’s. He was “haunted” by the crisis with Maria Halpin and Oscar. There were days at work when he could think of nothing else. Sensing that a public scandal might erupt at any moment now, he became thoroughly alarmed.

  Cleveland had not become as powerful as he was by waiting for things to happen. He focused on a chink in Maria’s armor. She had always appreciated a glass or two of wine at dinner, but now, he heard, her drinking was becoming a serious concern. Even her supportive neighbor, Mrs. Baker, had to agree.

  “After the birth of her child she led a blameless life until her misery drove her to drink,” Mrs. Baker told a reporter in 1884. She said she understood the source of Maria’s problems: “She took to drink to drown the grief that was consuming her.” Whatever the rationale, this was the information Cleveland needed to finally go on the offensive.

  His years in the district attorney’s office and as sheriff of Erie County had left him with innumerable law enforcement contacts. His first move was to seek out the services of the police, but in a strictly private capacity. He went to see John Byrne, the superintendent of the Buffalo Police Department.

  Byrne was born in Ireland and came to America when he was five. In his teens, he was apprenticed to a carriage and coach manufacturer. He was twenty-two when the Civil War broke out, and was an authentic war hero with the battle scars to prove it. In an assault on the enemy works at the Spotsylvania Court House in Virginia, Byrne, then a major in the celebrated 155th New York State Volunteers Irish Regiment, was shot in the head with a bullet that entered his temple, blew apart the back of his eyeball, and exited his cheek. He not only survived but became a regimental legend when, after just ten weeks of convalescence, he returned to the field wearing patches on his wounds to take command. A month later, Byrne was captured by Confederate forces and spent six months in a POW camp before he was released in a prisoner exchange. At war’s end, he mustered out of the army having achieved the full rank of colonel.

  Byrne was appointed Buffalo’s first police superintendent in 1872, and brought military discipline and professionalism to a force reputed to have been one of the most “untrustworthy” in the nation. On the day Cleveland went to see him about Maria Halpin, Byrne still bore his disfiguring war wounds. His left eye was gone, and he no longer had a sense of taste or smell.

  Cleveland told Byrne about Maria Halpin’s drinking and threats and asked the police superintendent to assign some men to keep her under surveillance. Despite their political differences—Byrne was a Republican—and whatever Byrne may have privately thought of Cleveland for sitting out the war, the police superintendent said he would see what he could do
.

  Byrne assigned two of his sharpest men to investigate Maria: Robert Watts, a dependable detective whose father had served as a cavalry captain in the War of 1812, and Police Officer Thomas Curtin, another steady hand, currently assigned to special duty at the Third Precinct. Curtin was thirty-six, the son of Irish immigrants. (Police work ran in his blood: His brother John was a detective with the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in New York City.)

  Thomas Curtin had been an ironworker until he was twenty-five, then switched careers and found work as a clerk in the Buffalo tax receiver’s office. In 1872, he joined the police force, where he developed the reputation of having an “eagle eye” for ferreting out crime; it was said that he could “tell a culprit on sight quicker than any man in America.” He was a big man, just under six feet and weighing two hundred pounds, with a muscular physique, a florid complexion, and brown hair with matching mustache. He was also a politically connected Democrat, and a rising star in the police department.

  Cleveland met with Watts and Curtin and told them he had two goals in procuring their services. One was to “divine the woman’s intentions”; the other was to “work some scheme by which she and her child could be separated and removed.”

  When Watts and Curtin went to see Maria at her apartment on East Genesee Street, they encountered a woman of culture and determination—not what they had expected. Some civilians might find a dressing-down by two police officers intimidating, but Maria made no concessions and refused to give any ground. Watts and Curtin reported to Cleveland that “they could find nothing out from the woman and could do nothing with her.” Cleveland was disappointed, and was even said to be in a state of “desperation” at the report; but in his mind, he had already begun to formulate the next stage in his campaign to eradicate Maria Halpin from his life.

  Cleveland decided to seek the advice of Roswell L. Burrows, a judge whose four-year tenure on the Erie County Court bench had just come to an end. Now in private practice, the fifty-five-year-old Burrows lived on Franklin Street with his wife, Marie; four children; and a maid who went by the peculiar name Thankful Brum. Burrows was the son of a former New York State senator and had served on the Buffalo Sanitation Commission during the great cholera panic that swept the city in the early 1850s. Most significantly for Cleveland, Burrows was also a trustee of the Buffalo Orphan Asylum. Cleveland asked Burrows to see if he could reason with Maria Halpin.