Bag of Bones Read online

  In November 1878, A. T. Stewart’s body was stolen from its resting place at St. Mark’s Churchyard in New York City and held for more than two hundred thousand-dollar ransom. Advised by family friend Henry Hilton,the executor of Stewart’s will, Cornelia Stewart did not comply with the grave robbers’ demands. Several suspects were arrested but were soon released after it was discovered that either a desire for fame or heavy-handed police tactics had motivated their false confessions. The gruesome crime created a media frenzy as newspapers tried to outdo each other in their sensational coverage. The American imagination was captivated. In just one example, the incident was depicted in Mark Twain’s humorous story “The Stolen White Elephant,” published in 1882.

  Not only did the grave robbing cause a national sensation, it also led to one of the most notoriously bungled police investigations in New York City’s history.

  Finally, in 1881, nearly three years after the body of her husband was stolen, Cornelia Stewart reportedly regained her husband’s remains. The Merchant Prince of Manhattan, now just a burlap bag of bones, was handed over on a dusty road in Westchester County. Cornelia buried her husband for the last time in the family crypt at the Episcopal Cathedral of the Incarnation in Garden City—a structure completed in 1885 by Cornelia as a lasting memorial to her husband.

  Two great mysteries surround that crypt today. There is no way to know if the bones buried there are truly those of A. T. Stewart. A century before DNA testing, bones were just bones and there was no method to accurately identify if they were Stewart’s or not. The children of Cornelia and A. T. Stewart preceded them in death, and no one has ever sought to exhume the bones for identification. They remain laid to rest in the family crypt on the orders of Cornelia, who claimed without a doubt that the bones belonged to her husband. If it was good enough for her, it appeared to be good enough for everyone connected with the case.

  The other enduring mystery is who actually stole the bones? The grave robbers? They were never caught.

  But there is much more to this mystery than the gruesome theft of A. T. Stewart’s bones and their questionable recovery. There is Judge Henry Hilton. How did this man get his hands on the forty-million-dollar Stewart fortune? And how was he able to manipulate the grieving widow into allowing him to continue the A. T. Stewart retail business, despite explicit instructions in Stewart’s will to sell the business and give the proceeds to his wife? Hilton’s inexplicable hold over Cornelia Stewart extended even beyond her death in 1886, when she bequeathed him approximately $9.5 million, half of her estate. And there is another head-scratching mystery—how did Hilton, the executor of the vast A. T. Stewart retail empire, manage to run the business into the ground and spend all of the Stewart fortune by the time of his death in 1899?

  Except for Garden City and the Cathedral of the Incarnation, there is nothing that remains of the once great and successful A. T. Stewart department store, considered the first such store in America. The unique buildings Stewart constructed to house his retail empire, the Marble Palace and the Cast Iron Palace, are gone. Even his luxurious white marble mansion on Fifth Avenue is gone. His entire forty-million-dollar fortune was depleted at the hands of Hilton. The A. T. Stewart story disappeared along with it. The man who practically invented the American department store has for too long been lost in the annals of American history. Bag of Bones attempts to unravel some of the mysteries surrounding Stewart. Throughout the book, I have included headlines and portions of newspaper articles from the period. These pieces are replicated exactly as they appeared. The typos and misspellings are just as they were in such newspapers as the New York Times, the Brooklyn Eagle, and other historical sources.

  1

  COUNTER CULTURE

  In which Alexander Turney Stewart, New York City’s “Merchant Prince of Manhattan,” dies, leaving his widow, Cornelia, a forty-million-dollar fortune and naming Judge Henry Hilton as the executor of his estate. From his humble beginnings in Ireland, Stewart rises to wealth and power, and constructs a series of landmark buildings, including his two retail outlets—the Marble Palace and the Cast Iron Palace—and his lavish domicile, the Marble Mansion.

  To paraphrase the great Charles Dickens from A Christmas Carol, A. T. Stewart was dead to begin with—dead as a doornail. Alexander Turney Stewart died on April 10, 1876, at seventy-two years of age in his palatial home, dubbed the “Marble Mansion,” located on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street, in the heart of New York City. At the time of his death, Stewart was one of the wealthiest men in America. He left behind a fortune worth approximately forty million dollars. His real estate holdings in New York alone were assessed around four million dollars but were more likely to bring in more than ten million dollars. His personal wealth ranked third in the nation behind William B. Astor Sr., who made his fortune in real estate holdings, and Cornelius Vanderbilt, who became rich through his railroad investments.

  Among the properties Stewart owned were the “Cast Iron Palace,” his giant retail department store that occupied the block bordered by Broadway, Fourth Avenue, and Ninth and Tenth Streets; the Metropolitan Hotel; his wholesale store on Broadway, Chambers, and Reade; the “Marble Mansion;” the Globe Theater property on Broadway; and four city lots valued at ninety-six thousand dollars collectively.

  His private art collection, including paintings and statuary on display in his home, was estimated to be worth more than $600,000. Among the paintings was Meissonier’s Charges des Cuirassiers, for which Stewart paid approximately $75,000. His personal property was assessed at three million dollars. Yet, personal property and Big Apple real estate represented only a portion of his immense wealth. Besides stocks and bonds, he owned millions of dollars worth of mill property near Fishkill, New York; Garden City in its entirety; the railroad connecting the planned community to Hunter’s Point; the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga Springs, New York; stores and businesses in London, Paris, and other European cities; and manufacturing mills throughout the United States and abroad. An enormously successful retail merchant, he was the largest importer of goods in America and he owned more real estate in the country than any other person, with the exception of William B. Astor.

  DEATH OF A.T. STEWART

  CAREER OF THE MERCHANT PRINCE

  He Dies At His Residence In Fifth Avenue Surrounded By His Friends—

  Mr. Stewart’s Birth And Early Life—

  The Secret Of His Success—Incidents

  Of His Business Life—Wealth And Personal Habits

  At 1:50 o’clock yesterday afternoon Alexander Turney Stewart died, at his residence at Thirty-fourth Street and Fifth avenue, in this city, in the seventy-third year of his age. … While it is true that it was chiefly as a merchant that Mr. Stewart was eminent, it was not that alone, nor even his great wealth, that made him conspicuous. It cannot be said that he was noted as a public philanthropist, or that he used any part of his fortune, which is estimated at from $40,000,000 to $50,000,000 for the benefit of the City where he acquired it. The only monument of this kind which he has left behind him is the Women’s Home at Thirty second street and Fourth avenue, which is yet uncompleted. … So also is Garden City, on Long Island, where he furnished comfortable homes to poor men at rates which, indeed, gave him fair returns, but also enabled them to live far more decently than ever before. … In March 1869 President Grant appointed him Secretary of the Treasury, and it is understood that he would have accepted had not his confirmation been prevented by the law of 1742, which excludes from that office all who are interested in importations. … As his fortunes increased, Mr. Stewart made his domestic arrangements keep pace with it, until several years ago he removed to the house in which he died, and which is perhaps the most palatial private residence on the Continent. … The funeral services will take place at St. Mark’s Church, at Second avenue and Stuyvesant street.

  —New York Times

 
; April 11, 1876

  A. T. Stewart, who was frequently referred to in print as the “Merchant Prince,” is credited with developing the first department store. That honor actually belongs to Aristide Boucicaut, whose Paris store, Bon Marché, began in 1838 and developed into the first department store in 1852. There, for the first time, a great quantity of merchandise was sold in various departments all under one roof. Boucicaut established fixed prices and a money-back guarantee—policies that Stewart later incorporated into his business. By 1855, Bon Marché employed nearly four thousand workers and had sales of approximately $300,000 daily.

  Still, A. T. Stewart can be credited with starting the first American department store. That title is undisputed. In 1846, Stewart built the country’s first department store on 280 Broadway, between Chambers and Reade Streets. The store was dubbed the “Marble Palace,” because of its size and ornate marble façade. In 1862, Stewart built an even larger, more ornate store. The huge six-story structure took up a full city block bounded by Broadway, Fourth Avenue, and Ninth and Tenth Streets, and had a dome skylight and emporium. It is thought to be the first building in New York City with a cast-iron front. It was appropriately enough dubbed the “Cast Iron Palace.”

  A. T. Stewart was born in Lisburn, Ireland, on October 12, 1803. Lisburn, in Ulster Province, six miles from Belfast, is located along the banks of the Lagan River. John Turney, a Lisburn farmer, had one daughter, Margaret. His wife died while Margaret was still a child. When Margaret reached the age of eighteen, she married farmer Alexander Stewart, a native of Scotland, who had settled in the north of Ireland on Red Hill in Lisburn, not far from where Margaret’s father ran his farm. Alexander Stewart contracted tuberculosis shortly after his marriage to Margaret and died, leaving his pregnant widow to fend for herself. A few months after her husband’s death, she gave birth to a son. He was christened Alexander Turney Stewart, in honor of his father and grandfather. John Turney took his daughter and grandson into his home to care for them and subsequently remarried a younger woman who had a child of her own. The relationship between Margaret and her stepmother was intolerable. Still a beautiful woman, Margaret remarried a man named David Bell in 1804. They emigrated to America, leaving her baby son in the care of his maternal grandfather.

  John Turney wanted his grandson to become a Protestant Episcopal minister of the Church of England and set in motion the apparatus to have young Alexander admitted to Trinity College in Dublin. In the meantime, the boy attended a local school, and in 1814 began his studies at Neely’s English Academy. After Neely’s he spent two years at Trinity College. In 1816, John Turney died, and a guardian, Thomas Lamb, an Irish Quaker, took in the boy. Alexander Turney Stewart was studious and received an excellent classical education, becoming proficient in Greek and Latin. He passed all his examinations with honors, but long before he had completed his second year at Trinity and even before his grandfather died, he had discarded the notion of ever becoming a clergyman, a decision he never revealed to his grandfather while he was alive. It was only after his grandfather’s death that he expressed his feelings to his guardian.

  “I have not the qualities a clergyman ought to possess, indeed, I have not the least desire to enter the ministry, I rather shrink from it. So long as I feel so, it seems to me unwise to go on with my preparation for sacred orders,” Stewart told Lamb.

  Lamb responded: “Perhaps you are right; I am not prepared to say that your views are wrong. I am quite sure that no young man should enter the ministry against his own judgment and wishes; but we need to give the subject serious consideration, that we may settle it wisely.”

  With his desires now known, Stewart continued his formal education while setting his sights on a different career choice. He wrote frequently to his mother, who was then living in New York City, and the correspondence between them led Stewart to yearn to travel to America—New York, specifically—to try to make his fortune in the retail business. It was an odd choice of careers for a young man schooled primarily in the classics, urged to enter the ministry, trained as a teacher, and lacking any education or training in the field of retail business.

  Thomas Lamb, who willingly acquiesced to Stewart’s desire, insisted that the boy gain some experience in the retail trade before trying to launch his career overseas in America.

  He set the young Stewart up with a job as a grocer at a small store in Belfast, where he could not only learn the retail business firsthand, but also earn some money.

  Still, Stewart longed to begin his career in the New World, to leave Ireland, reunite with his mother, and begin a new life. Long and arduous days and nights laboring as a Belfast grocer were merely a hindrance, he thought, to his true vocation awaiting him in America.

  In the spring of 1818, Stewart packed his bags, along with the money he had earned working as a grocer in Belfast, and left for America. He landed in New York City six weeks later and joined his mother and stepfather. Stewart now had two half-siblings, James and Mary, and they all lived as one family for a brief time before Stewart struck out on his own.

  Lamb had supplied the young Stewart with letters of introduction to a number of his Quaker friends living in New York, and Stewart wasted no time calling on them. Having studied two years at Trinity College, Stewart was more than capable in teaching the classics and math. He obtained a temporary position at a wealthy private school, Isaac N. Bragg’s Academy on Roosevelt Street, then a very fashionable part of the city. He was paid a yearly stipend of three hundred dollars, a more than comfortable amount for a young man during that era, but Stewart had other ambitions. He wanted to begin a retail business, and although he had no immediate idea what type of retail enterprise he would open, his life’s path spread out before him when he made a monumental and life-changing loan to a friend.

  While still teaching school, Stewart loaned eighty dollars to a friend who wanted to open a small dry-goods store. Because of an emergency in his life, the friend was unable to continue with his enterprise. Stewart saw his chance. He resigned his teaching position and began his life’s work, albeit on a small scale, at a storefront on Greenwich Street, a location he occupied from roughly 1819 to 1823. Stewart launched his full-blown retail career in 1823 when he moved to a small rented store at 283 Broadway.

  The America to which Alexander Turney Stewart immigrated in 1818 had a population of 9.6 million people. About 124,000 people were living in New York City when he arrived.

  Like much of the rest of the country, New York City was not able to support major retail stores, relying instead on what was and remains known as the “country store,” which, like the later department stores, carried all kinds of goods and supplies, including clothes, food, tools, and household necessities.

  One of the first “country stores” was begun by Jedediah Barber, who opened his “Great Western” store in 1811 in one room of his home on Main Street in Homer, New York. Much of Barber’s business was conducted in trade or bartering. Still, he built his business from one small room to an establishment with three floors of merchandise and ten employees. The store remained in business until 1856.

  Stewart’s retail genius was immediately demonstrated by his ability to identify trends in women’s fashion. He was quick to become aware of what many of New York City’s most fashionable women were wearing and noted that many of the dresses had lace trim. This type of needlework was an expensive enterprise in the United States, which added to the cost of the dresses, but lace was an inexpensive commodity in Stewart’s homeland, especially in Belfast, where Irish lace was cheaply and abundantly made. Stewart immediately struck on an idea. He returned to Ireland and invested what little money he had in importing Irish lace, the kind used in trimming expensive dresses. Stewart discovered he could sell the Irish lace from his small storefront on Greenwich Street for more than ten times the price he bought it. Despite the huge markup, it was still half as much as the going price of the same lace t
rimmings in New York. Buying Irish lace low in Ireland and selling it high in America brought the young Stewart his first retail success.

  In 1823, Stewart opened the first of his Broadway stores at 283 Broadway, a very modest place that became known as “Stewart’s little store.” The store, with a twenty-five-foot frontage, took up merely one-half of the building, which also housed the Washington Hotel. The rent for the new store was just $250 per year. It consisted of one large front room with a smaller room in the rear, where Stewart lived and slept.

  In 1824, he returned to Ireland, where he received an inheritance of approximately $3,500 from his grandfather. He used a large amount of this money to buy Irish lace scallop-trimmings used on women’s dresses and shipped them back to New York, where he sold them from his small storefront. The tiny store was a one-man operation with Stewart working as his own buyer, salesman, and bookkeeper. He became adept at all three roles. Stewart was the first to introduce the radical retail idea of a one-price-for-all-customers rule.

  Before the introduction of Stewart’s system, shoppers often haggled with merchants about prices, trying to beat down the cost of various items. Merchants in turn would try to sell inferior goods for more than they were worth or misrepresent the products they were selling as new when they were anything but fresh. Stewart promised his customers that he would not sell anything in his store for more than its value in the open market. He also vowed to his customers that, if a particular product went down in worth, he would lower the price of the merchandise accordingly. If the value of certain goods rose, he would increase the price accordingly as well, without fail. Thus, Stewart proved his business acumen.