Evelyn Grove and Fred Seely with two of their children
Fred Loring Seely was born on December 22, 1871, in Shark River, Monmouth County, New Jersey, which is where he grew up. He was the third child of Uriah Seely and Nancy Hopping; Uriah was descended from John Seely, a private in the Revolutionary War. There were seven children altogether, two girls and five boys. Two of his siblings were born deaf; when Seely owned the Biltmore Industries, he made a point of hiring deaf employees.
One of Seely's brothers, who was two years his junior and a graduate of Rutgers College, was also well known. A journalist with the New York World. After the 1905 earthquake, he traveled to San Francisco and loved it there. He became involved with the insurance and theater industry in San Francisco, which is where he met his second wife, Minneapolis-born actress Blanche Stoddard. She was friends with actors of the day, including Ethel Barrymore. He left his first wife to marry her, and their divorce became great fodder for the newspapers of the day. He and Blanche had two daughters, and, surprisingly, that marriage lasted until Walter's death in 1936.
Blanche Stoddard
However, Walter turned out to be very much unlike his upstanding and stalwart brother Fred. In 1908, he was arrested for embezzlement by the Dick Ferris company:
Walter Hoff Seely is Charged with Embezzlement by Dick Ferris.
Los Angeles. February 8 -- Walter Seely, the well-known clubman, Shriner and former business manager and warm personal friend of Dick Ferris, the theatrical man, is charged with embezzlement in a complaint issued today by the District Attorney. He has gone to his San Francisco home, and the authorities have been wired to arrest him. Ferris swore out the warrant. Before leaving here Wednesday, Seely directed that his mail be sent to the St. Francis Hotel.
Ferris met Seely last summer and employed him. Two months ago Seely, who had handled much of the theatrical man's money, so the latter claims, left his employ and refused to make an accounting, though urged ever since to do so. He alleges that Seely "held out" in several transactions more than $1,000.
During his stay here, Seely was accepted in the best society, occupied elegant apartments, and made many friends, who say he will be able to make a satisfactory settlement. . . .
I'm not sure how that case panned out, but he hid out for a while and it took a long time to arrest him. Afterwards, Walter worked a variety of jobs in advertising and eventually went back to the publishing world and became publisher of Success Magazine. He seems to have been a flamboyant man, and was often written up in newspapers for both good and bad things, as the cartoon above shows. Apparently he bombed when he tried his hand at acting. He was the opposite of Fred, too, in that Fred was uncomfortable in the limelight. He died at the age of 63, after being an invalid for five years due to an automobile accident.
But back to Fred and Evelyn. As a young man, Seely went to Detroit to seek his fortune. It has been said that he and Henry Ford lived in the same boarding house, but I'm not sure how true that is. I have not been able to confirm it. Nevertheless, he did have a relationship with Ford, who famously stayed at the Grove Park Inn in 1918 and in other years. He became a chemist for the Parke, Davis pharmaceutical company, but it's not clear what his educational background was. His brother went to Rutgers, but I can find no mention of Fred attending any college. One article said that before he went to Detroit, he worked as an office boy in New York City, starting at the age of 13.
Apparently at one point after his marriage he expressed a desire to go to law school at Yale; he never did so, but all three of his sons were educated there. As has been discussed, he became an executive for the Paris Medicine Company after Edwin Grove stole him away from Detroit, and Seely soon joined the Grove family when he married Grove's daughter Evelyn.
Evelyn seems very two-dimensional to me, and a bit of a shrinking violet, but maybe that's because not much has been written about her. Her stepmother Gertie disliked her because she felt Grove loved his daughter more than he loved her, but Evelyn didn't seem to hold grudges and didn't appear to care much about money. She said this about the fact that her stepmother's legal maneuvers resulted in her getting several million dollars less than her callow stepbrother:
As you remember, Mama Grove broke my father's will, but that was perfectly all right, as I received for more than I deserved, and I am certain it was never intended for my children to have great wealth.
When Fred and Evelyn lived in Atlanta, Evelyn joined many women's social and charitable organizations there, and in fact was the head of an club that oversaw all of the city's women's clubs. She was equally involved in Asheville, and was constantly entertaining out-of-town guests -- sometimes very illustrious ones -- who stayed at the Grove Park Inn or at Overlook Castle.
The Seelys had five children: Alice "Gertrude" Seely (1901, named after Evelyn's supposed arch-enemy, her stepmother), Mary "Louise" Seely (1903, named after her own mother), John Day Seely (1905), James "Grove" Seely (1908) and Fred Loring Seely, Jr. (1916). Of course they were all the grandchildren of Edwin W. Grove, who had another three grandsons by Edwin Jr. For some reason, most of them spent their adult life in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Daughter Gertrude married Princeton and UNC-educated lawyer John deWalden Eller in 1927 in a large wedding held in the family's church, All Souls Episcopal Church. Eller was from Winston-Salem, where the couple took up residence. They had three children.
Louise married John Beard in 1925, and they also lived in Winston-Salem. Perhaps they introduced Gertrude to her husband. They had two children, but divorced in 1947.
John Day Seely , who was educated at Asheville School for Boys, UNC, and Yale, where he received a Ph.D., and became a banker and was involved with a car dealership. He also married a woman from Winston-Salem, Mary Archer Williamson, and that's where they lived. (He was born in Princeton, where the Seely's were monitoring his half-uncle, Edwin Grove, Jr.)
James "Grove" Seely likewise graduated from Yale. In 1934, Grove was chosen to be king of the Rhododendron Festival, a debutante ball in Asheville. They couple had two sons.He married Mary Louise Thompson and they ultimately resided in Washington, D.C., where Grove was a banker and later operated a travel agency.
John Day Seely
Fred Loring Seely, Jr., arrived in 1916, and was significantly younger than his siblings. He also went to Asheville School for Boys and to Yale, and spent eight years in the Navy, attaining the rank of lieutenant commander. In 1950, Fred Jr. married Eleanor Hair Van Tassel, also of Winston-Salem. It was a second marriage for both., Eleanor had been widowed. Fred and Elvira Bryson had divorced, and their two children remained with their mother. Fred and Eleanor had two sons.
At the time he married, he had been living in Daytona Beach, Florida, which is where his wedding took place. He was in Daytona Beach recovering from an illness, but managed to take enough courses at Stetson University to receive a master's degree there. He bought several Daytona Beach hotels.
After his stint in the military, Fred Jr. was the only Seely child who remained in Asheville after adulthood; he was the most like his father of any of the five children, and because he was so much younger, his parents had more time to spend with him. He took over his father's role at Biltmore Industries after Seely's death in 1942. As a child, he spent many hours at Biltmore Industries learning various mountain crafts, including weaving the homespun for which they were world famous. (He ultimately sold Biltmore Industries to up-and-coming Asheville business man Harry Bloomberg.) He was a trustee of Asheville-Biltmore College, which had taken over the Seely private home, Overlook Castle. He was also a managing director of the Battery Park Hotel during Albert Barnett's tenure there. He and his brother Grove were tasked by their mother to oversee the Battery Park Hotel, after their father's death, receiving the property in a trust; the other three children and the generation below also received money from the hotel.
An in-depth article about Seely in the Charlotte News and Observer on October 8, 1950 said this:
His formal education was obtained largely in one big room under his father's office, under the direction of Dr. Charles Lloyd, who was a leading contributor to the success of infant Biltmore College. The fabulous Seely home of Fred's childhood days -- a palatial stone mansion atop beautiful Sunset Mountain various termed Outcook Castle or "Seely Castle" -- now is the home of Asheville-Biltmore College.
His education was augmented by frequent business trips he took wish his father. Frequently his father insisted that he sit with him at directors' meeting and other business sessions of importance. While the senior Seely was a member of the Utilities Commission in Raleigh, his son spent much time with him at the State capital and became acquainted with his political friends.
Father and son made numerous trips abroad together and once traveled around the world. They visited many of the business associates and friends in the Netherlands who had worked with the senior Seely when he made his start in the quinine fields of Java.
Fred Jr. and Eleanor raised their children in Biltmore Forest, and were both extremely active in just about every organization available in Asheville and elsewhere. Fred served as vice-Mayor of Asheville. In 1975, the couple retired to Tryon, North Carolina, which had been Eleanor's summer home growing up. Tryon is also the town, not far from Asheville, where the two women first associated with Biltmore Industries (Eleanor Vance and Charlotte Yale) had moved in 1914, where they established the Tryon Toy makers.
Unfortunately, high blood pressure was the curse of the Seely family, and not only was Fred impacted by it, but several of his children died relatively young because of it, in a time where it was not treatable.
In 1941, John Day Seely died in Winston-Salem of malignant hypertension at the age of 36, a year prior to Fred Seely Sr.'s own death from hypertension.
Louise Seely Beard succumbed to hypertensive cardiovascular disease and kidney failure in January, 1950; she had been ill for a long time and was being treated at Duke University Hospital, which is where she died at the age of 46.
Daughter Gertrude lived a long life of 85 years, but died a terrible death, along with her divorced attorney daughter, Alice Eller Patterson, and her grandson, Frederick Seely Patterson. Three more descendants of Edwin Grove died in a housefire. Fred had come home to Winston-Salem at Christmas during his senior year at UNC. From the Greensboro News and Record on January 2, 1987:
A house fire in [a] Winston-Salem house took the lives of three family members early New Year's morning.
The bodies of Alice Gertrude S. Eller, 85, a lawyer who had her own practice, were found collapsed by the front door inside the one-story home at 308 Banbury Road.
Alice Patterson's 23-year-old son, Frederick, an English major at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was found in a den near where the fire is believed to have started.
Fire officials believe the two women were awakened by the heavy smoke and tried to escape.
Dr. T.W. Lowdermilk, a medical examiner at Forsyth Memorial Hospital, said the three were declared dead on the scene. He said Patterson died from burns, and the women died from smoke inhalation.
From the Asheville-Citizen Times on January 2, 1987:
. . . Mrs. Patterson was a candidate for Forsyth County District Court judge in 1983. She was in private practice.
Patterson was Mrs. Patterson's only child. He was studying English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and was home for the holiday break.
The UNC Daily Tarheel said this about Fred:
Patterson, a graduate of Forsyth Country Day School in Winston-Salem, was a member of Phi Delta Theta fraternity, and he wrote for The Daily Tar Heel's state and national desk.
. . . "He was an extremely good writer," Ethan Hadley, one of Patterson's fraternity brothers, said Tuesday. He wanted to write a novel.
Hadley said Patterson was a very intelligent, interesting person. "He was well-adjusted to college because he took the time off before he came to UNC," Hadley said. "He did very well in everything he tried. He was a great friend."
Patterson also worked as a cook at Molly Maguire's Irish Pub on East Rosemary Street. He was well-liked among his co-workers and easy to work with, manager Kevin Huggins said.
"He was a real laid-back guy," Huggins said. "Quite often when he got off work, his frat brothers would come and they'd sit together at the bar. He was always be-bopping around. He seemed to enjoy life."
The fire investigator said that he saw nothing to say the fire was started intentionally, and it was ruled accidental. Anything beyond that he considered "pure speculation."
Evelyn and Fred Seely in old age
Fred Sr. died at home on March 14, 1942, surrounding by Evelyn and his four surviving children. He was 74. The Asheville Times said the following:
High blood pressure has limited Mr. Seely's activities for some time, but his condition did not become serious until two weeks ago. His condition took a turn for the worse while he was marooned at Battery Park hotel during the recent heavy snow, and for several days could not reach his home on Sunset mountain. He had been confined to his bed since that time.
The Asheville Citizen-Times published a full-page spread about all the things Seely had accomplished in his life and in Asheville. What I've discussed here is the tip of the iceberg, but I won't be going into any more detail. The only thing I'll mention is that he was largely singularly instrumental in bringing the ENKA rayon plant to the Asheville area, having met with some of the movers and shakers of the plant when he traveled to Java, and around the world, on his belated honeymoon with Evelyn.
Evelyn held on until 1953. when she succumbed to heart disease at the age of 75. In the decade after Fred's death, she sold and donated much of her property holdings in a very deliberate way. She really did not feel comfortable being wealthy. The Seely/Grove marriage based on -- some say only knowing each other for days -- was a very successful one in almost every way that counts, at least looking at it from the outside.
A few years ago when I was researching the Seelys, I came upon a current clipping referencing a student from Asheville School for Boys who was both an outstanding student and athlete. His name was given as Fred Loring Seely. I'm not sure which brother he is descended from, but clearly the family is still going strong.
Below is another collage I made of the Grove Park Inn during the 20s and 30s:
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