Now I'm going to write a little about the Grove family, who were instrumental in my mother's side of the family. As most of you know, Edwin Wiley Grove (shown above with Edwin III and Edwin Jr.) built the Grove Park Inn in Asheville in 1913. My maternal grandfather, Albert Nunnally Barnett, managed the Inn in the 1920s and '30s.
As discussed in Volume II of my e-book, Edwin W. Grove -- often referred to as Dr. Grove, even though he'd never attended college -- made a fortune selling patent medicines. His biggest seller was Groves Tasteless Chill Tonic, which was a malaria cure. He had hired druggist Fred Loring Seely to figure out how to put his tonic in pill form, to make it more palatable. Seely soon joined the family, marrying Grove's daughter Evelyn.
Grove was born in 1850 and raised in Bolivar, Tennessee (the 1860 census fortuitously and auspiciously says his next door neighbor was a druggist). After establishing a drug company in nearby Paris, Tennessee, he moved his business and his family to Saint Louis, Missouri, where finding employees and shipping his product would be easier.
Grove's first wife and Evelyn's two sisters had died in the 1880s -- some say they died of malaria -- and Grove remarried Alice "Gertrude" Matthewson. Grove and Gertie had two sons and one daughter, but the only child who survived childhood was Edwin Wiley Grove, Jr., born in 1890.
By 1900, Grove had bought a summer home in Asheville [Note: the home was on North Liberty Street, near our Moore relatives]; he suffered from chronic hiccups, which he attributed to the polluted air in the factory district of St. Louis. His physician had recommended the healthful air in the Western North Carolina mountains. Grove found that he loved Asheville that he began dealing in real estate there, contributing to the building of several neighborhoods, including the eponymous Grove Park. He built the Grove Park Inn in 1913 with the indispensable help of his multiply talented son-in-law Fred Seely, who functioned as the architect of the hotel and became its manager.
Grove had told Seely that upon his death, he would bequeath to him the Grove Park Inn and a controlling share in the Paris Medicine Company. In the meantime, Gertrude felt that her son Edwin had been given short shrift, and waged a campaign for him to inherit the Inn and the Paris Medicine Company stock instead.
In 1925, Fred Seely got wind that a revised will had left him completely out of it, in favor of Edwin Jr. He filed a lawsuit against Grove in 1925, because Seely wanted him to be able to answer for it while he, Grove, was still living. However, Grove would die before the lawsuit got underway.
An elderly Grove became ill while on a business trip to Philadelphia in the winter of 1926, while Gertie was staying at their winter home in St. Petersburg, Florida. He was too sick to travel home, and so a room at the five-star Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia (in 1976 the source of Legionnaire's Disease) became his sickbed. Supposedly, a private-duty nurse, originally from Virginia, who had been hired to care for him for the past year, was in attendance at the hotel.
Edwin Grove, Jr., learned of his father's illness and apparently became worried that his father would make a deathbed decision to change his will yet again. Edwin Jr. believed that Rubie (sometimes spelled 'Ruby') Dellinger was a mistress of Grove Sr., and was concerned that she would try to manipulate his father into leaving part of his estate to her.
Edwin Jr. hired a private detective or two, and using an assumed name, the men took a room at the Bellevue-Stratford next door to his father's room. They proceeded to drill a hole into the wall between the rooms so they could spy on Edwin Sr. and his nurse in order to be able to act swiftly if he showed any signs of altering his will. (Some sources said he drilled a hole in the door to the rooms.) Although it was never noted in newspapers, Edwin Jr. brought Gertie with him to Philadelphia, so convinced he was that his father was vulnerable to a gold digger nurse. It is true that Edwin Sr. had been showing signs of senility in the last year or so of his life, which made the concern more valid.
The full story didn't come out until many months after Grove Sr. had returned to his home at the Battery Park Hotel and died there peacefully on January 27, 1927. He was 76 years old. On December 2, 1927, the Asheville Times screamed about the matter in an article with a giant front-page headline:
Miss Rubie Dellinger Makes Sensational Charges of Character Assault
TELLS OF SPYING WORK
Says E.W. Grove, Jr. Had Her Ousted From Hotel By Hired Detectives
Charging that she was mortified, humiliated, slandered and brutally mistreated by Edwin W. Grove, Jr., of St. Louis, Mo. while she was ministering as a trained nurse to the latter's father, the late E.W. Grove, who died in Asheville, Jan. 27, 1927. Miss Rubie Dellinger, a trained nurse of Warren county, Virginia, filed suit for $100,000 damages against the St. Louis man in superior court here Friday.
E.W. Grove, Jr., the suit alleges, freely circulated "false and defamatory" statements to the effect that the nurse was guilty of immoral relations with his father while he was employed by the latter as a nurse.
The plaintiff charges that she was "shadowed" by detectives employed by E.W. Grove, Jr., and by the latter, while she was nursing E.W. Grove, Sr. The complaint relates an incident which is said to have occurred in November, 1926, at the Bellvue-Stratford [sic] hotel, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where the late Mr. Grove was ill and the plaintiff was nursing him. The nurse, it was related, had a room near that of Mr. Grove in order that she might be of assistance to him in his illness.
Charges Spying in Hotel.
Young Mr. Grove, it is charged, came to Philadelphia and obtained a room in the hotel adjoining that occupied by his father. Young Mr. Grove, it is alleged, registered at the hotel under the name of "McCoy," and he was accompanied by a detective who registered under the name of "Myers." Young Mr. Grove and "Myers," it is alleged, "bored a hole through the door between the room occupied by them and the room occupied by said E.W. Grove, Sr., was lying; that defendant and said detective spent hours and days at said peep hole watching plaintiff and her patient, the conduct of defendant being that engendered by a depraved mind and was wrongful, unlawful, malicious . . . "
On the night of Dec.13, 1926, the complaint charges after the defendant had gone to her room and was dressed only in her night clothes, the defendant and two other men who were acting under the instructions and in cooperation with defendant, went to the bedroom of the plaintiff, forced themselves into the room, and gave a paper to the plaintiff, telling her it was a warrant charging her with criminal libel, and that she was under arrest on that charge. [Note: I don't believe such a charge exists.]
Describes Hotel Scene
The defendant and his confederates, it is charged, warned the plaintiff she would have to leave Philadelphia at once, and that the defendant assaulted the plaintiff, and accused the plaintiff of conduct imputing guilt of impropriety, immorality and incontinency, and insulted her otherwise, and charged that plaintiff was attempting to rob the said E.W. Grove, Sr., of his properties and holdings, and had exerted and was exerting a fraudulent and improper influence over the said E.W. Grove, Sr., so as to obtain from him his properties and holdings, and had been guilty of immoral relations with said E.W. Grove, Sr., intending thereby to charge the plaintiff with having had sexual relations with said E.W. Grove, Sr.," and that, "all of the charges made by the defendant were false."
The plaintiff charges she was "ejected by defendant and his confederates from her bed room." at the hotel, was accompanied to the depot by one of the confederates and forced to leave Philadelphia. On leaving Philadelphia, the plaintiff states, she went to New York, where she was shadowed by detectives employed by the younger Mr. Grove. . . .
When Mr. Grove, Sr., learned what had happened, he contacted the Philadelphia police and Edwin Jr. was forced to leave the hotel and Rubie returned to her nursing duties. On January 6, Grove was deemed well enough to travel, and Rubie accompanied him to Asheville, where she continued to minister to his medical needs until his death on January 27.
In addition to the $100,000 slander lawsuit, nurse Dillinger subsequently sued Grove Jr. for what was described as a $50,000 "damage suit." The Charlotte observer had a photo or drawing of Rubie Dellinger:
The will of Edwin W. Grove, Sr. left his $10 million estate in the form of a trust, to be shared equally three ways: by his wife, Edwin Jr., and his daughter Evelyn, who was married to Fred Seely.
It is unclear to me how the lawsuit panned out in the end. The suit was complicated by the fact that it was originally filed in Asheville, and neither Rubie nor Edwin Jr. was a resident of the state of North Carolina. It was subsequently filed in federal court. Ultimately, Rubie's lawyers tried to garnish property from Edwin Jr., but the fact that his assets were co-owned by his mother and half-sister confused things even more. I believe that Grove's estate settled with her out of court, but I can't determine how much money she received.
It wouldn't be the last time Edwin Jr. would face legal problems involving other women. More to come.
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