Edwin Wiley Grove, Jr.
The entitled Edwin Wiley Grove, Jr. , was born in 1890 in Paris, Tennessee, the son of E.W. Grove, Sr., and his second wife, Gertie Matthewson. (I would note that sometimes the second Edwin Grove used the middle name Wrather instead of Wiley.) He grew up between two homes, one in St. Louis, Missouri, and one in Asheville. Edwin married Marguerite (sometimes called "Margaret") Lucia Cefalu of New Orleans in 1909; both were nineteen. Their nuptials were held at All Souls' Church in Asheville.
Marguerite's father -- Giovanni John Baptist Cefalu -- was born in Sicily and moved to New Orleans by 1894, where he was the president of the Great Southern Sulphur Company and became prominent in New Orleans affairs. Her mother was Mary Blanche Hynson of Covington, Kentucky (which was probably named for our Covington ancestors in my grandfather Barnett's line.) Marguerite was one of five sisters; there was one much older brother. The wealthy family spent their summers in Asheville in a home on Broad Street, not far from the Grove summer home on North Liberty Street, which is where Marguerite came in contact with Edwin Jr.
Edwin and Marguerite had three children: Edwin Wiley Grove III, born in 1911, and James Henry Grove, born in 1913. Gertrude Matthewson Grove -- named after his mother -- was born in 1916. The family lived in a St. Louis mansion.
Edwin's mother Gertrude passed away unexpectedly from a heart attack in St. Louis in 1928, a little over a year after his father's death, with mama's boy Edwin by her side. While Grove Sr.'s will had stipulated that his estate be divided into three equal trusts, one for his widow, one for his daughter by his previous marriage, and one for Edwin Jr., Gertrude had "renounced the will and elected to take her dower rights, in consequence of which she got a one-third interest outright." This enabled her to be able to leave most of her $3 million estate outright to Edwin Jr. (She also bequeathed some money and property to several charities and to some close friends, including a Mrs. W.J. Moore, who received $2,000. I believe this could possibly be our relative Minnie Moore, the wife of J. Walter Moore, whose initials may have been transposed, because they lived just across the street from each other.)
And so Edwin, who was Chairman of the Board of the Paris Medicine Company, was sitting pretty financially in 1932 when another lawsuit was filed against him for $500,000 -- five or ten times the amount of nurse Rubie Dellinger's lawsuit against Edwin Jr. in 1927 for libel and assault.
Miss Sadie Thompson White, a 24-year-old St. Louis divorcee, charged that Edwin had proposed marriage to her on February 24, 1932, under the assumed name of C.C. Long. She claimed she had no idea that he was married with three children. According to the lawsuit, they had an understanding that they would be married "within a reasonable time." Sadie "lavished affection and attention" on Edwin, but ultimately discovered that "he was not legally competent to marry her."
At the time that St. Louis and Asheville newspapers published the story about the breach-of-contract lawsuit -- when journalists reached out to Edwin Jr. for comment -- he was a patient at Deaconess Hospital in St. Louis. He was likely there due to the consequences of excessive drinking. "He said he was acquainted with her; that she knew him and had known him only by his right name, and declared that his acquaintance with her was a casual and innocent one."
The Asheville Times noted that E.W. Grove, Jr., had only been to Asheville a handful of times since the death of his father in 1927. I believe that was because most Ashevillians knew what a cad he was.
Grove Jr. died of pneumonia in St. Louis just two years later at the age of 44. He had been bed-ridden the past year of his life. His funeral was private, probably because few people would have showed up.
At the time of his death, the St. Louis Dispatch reported that:
Since August, 1933, Mr. Grove had received only $600 a month from the estates of his father and mother, leaving the balance of his income to be disbursed by trustees in payment of his personal obligations. . . .
After his father's death he was made defendant of numerous lawsuits, including one by his father's nurse, Miss Ruby Dellinger, in which she sought $100,000 for alleged slander. Another suit was by Miss Sadie Thompson White, a divorcee, who sought $500,000 on the allegation that Grove, under another name, had asked her to marry him."
According to the July 12, 1933 issue of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Edwin Jr., the President of the Paris Medicine Company, reportedly paid $109,913 "on personal debts that amounted to $283,760." He also owed the U.S. government $55,913 in income tax. There were multiple other debts -- to his very own company, to banks, to insurance companies, and various charities -- that were not included in the figures above. Also, at that time, Miss White's $500,000 lawsuit was not yet included.
Apparently his bankers or his lawyers had reined him in. "It has previously been reported Grove placed his financial affairs in trust last August with the St. Louis Union Trust Company . . . . By the arrangement, all Grove's income was to go towards settlement of his debts, save for $600 a month he was to receive for personal expenses." Unfortunately, I don't know how much either Miss Dellinger or Miss White managed to wrest out of Grove's greedy hands.
Edwin Wiley Grove, Jr.
Edwin Jr.'s estate -- what was left of it -- was to be divided four ways for his widow and each of his children. At the time of his death, Edwin W. Grove III was 22, James was 20 and a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Gertrude was 18, a student at Mary Institute in St. Louis.
Edwin W. Grove III was nothing like his father, but his life was also one of great tragedy. I'll write about that next.
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