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rewood13

The Mystery of Mr. Grove's Daughter

Updated: Aug 26



Just the other day (August 13, 2024) I read an article in the Asheville Citizen-Times which discussed a 3,000 sq. ft. home made of river rock in 1925 at 1 N. Griffin Blvd, which is currently up for sale. It was built in 1925 by North Asheville developer, Mr. E.W. Grove, supposedly for one of his daughters. But the article goes on to say that he didn't have a living daughter besides Evelyn, the daughter of his first wife, who was married to Fred Seely, and so there was apparently some confusion about who that daughter would be. However, I know who they're taking about! Serendipitously I was planning this blog post about this daughter at the same time this article came out. (And by the way, the article also mentioned two similar river rock homes that Grove built on Warwick Place in the mid-1920s, just a few doors down from Nanny's home at number 26.)


It is true that Grove fathered either one or two daughters by his first wife, who died in childhood, and a daughter from his second wife (they married in 1886), who also died very young. The 1900 U.S. Census for the Grove family, which was taken in Asheville, at a home they rented on Merrimon Avenue at the corner of Chestnut Street, shows seven individuals, including Grove, his wife Gertie, their son Edwin Grove Jr., 10, and their daughter Hellen (sic), age 3. Helen died the following year. (An older son by the second marriage, Hallet Harding Grove, had died in infancy in the late 1880's.)



Also listed were two servants: Sally Stines (White) and Siller Smith (Black). The seventh and last person named is a baby named Hellen (sic) Chandler, who was said to be an adopted daughter who was born in North Carolina. It is unusual to have a family member listed below the servants in the census; in fact I've never seen it happen before. I believe the baby Helen (Hellen) was a daughter of one of the servants. I found her ten years later living with a Black family in Asheville as a step-daughter.


Ten years later, the 1910 census showed the Grove family living in St. Louis. This time there were seven family members and two servants. The family included Grove, his wife Gertrude, his son Edwin Jr. and his daughter-in-law Marguerite, who had married in 1909, a friend named Lulu Granger, age 40k a foster daughter named Eleanor von Hook, an adopted daughter named Marjorie Grove, and two Black servants named Joseph Towns and Rebecca Love. Both Eleanor and Marjorie were said to have been born in Tennessee, as were both of their respective parents. And both Eleanora and Marjorie were listed as being 14 years old, but Marjorie was really only nine years old, having been born in 1901.


Eleanor and Marjorie were written up in society columns in Asheville and St. Louis newspapers in the 1910s and 20s, which showed them hobnobbing with the Groves and Seelys and the Asheville elite. Eleanor was said to be a niece of Mrs. Gertie Grove, but she was actually the niece of the first Mrs. Grove, Mary Louisa "Lula" Moore. The youngest of six children, she was a minor when both of her parents had died, and so was taken in by the Grove family. At this point, I had no clue as to how Marjorie came to be a part of the family. The family friend, just called "Lula," was likely another relation of the first Mrs. Grove -- perhaps a namesake of hers -- but I could never find a definitive answer to that.


Eleanor von Hook disappeared from the Asheville papers as she reached maturity; she likely returned to Tennessee where she had five older siblings, but Marjorie seems to have no family except the Groves.


Before I get into the life of Marjorie Grove -- whom I believe to be the Grove daughter for whom the river rock house was built -- I want to discuss where the Groves lived in Asheville. After renting a house for several years at the corner of Merrimon and Chestnut, the family built a large summer home on 43 North Liberty Street, which was just across Broad Street from our Moore relatives, my second great uncle, J. Walter, Minnie, Helen, and Elizabeth Moore, who were great friends with the Grove family. I had no idea! I believe Minnie was bequeathed $2,000 from Gertie Grove upon her death in 1928. J. Walter's sister Lizzie Moore, who lived nearby on Washington Street, was also friendly with the Groves -- all were mentioned in newspapers at various times as guests of the Groves at family celebrations, and sometimes the Moores would entertain the Groves at their rambling Victorian home.


Edwin and Gertie Grove, undated photo, taken in St. Petersburg, Florida


I even found Gram's (Helen Neely's) name associated with Marjorie Grove and Eleanor von Hook in the society columns! Marjorie was also named in the local newspaper as attending dance lessons given by Arthur Murray in 1919 at the old Battery Park Hotel, along with her contemporary, Cornelia Vanderbilt and several of our wealthy Brown cousins. (Gram wasn't on that list, but she had married two years prior, and so wouldn't have been eligible as it was single ladies only.)


The Congregation Beth HaTephila ultimately built a synagogue on the site of the Grove summer home; in googling 43 North Liberty Street, I was able to see how close the Grove and Moore houses would have been back in the day; they were both on corners of Broad Street and North Liberty. (I'm not sure when the synagogue was built, and whether any of the original Grove house was incorporated into it.) I had thought the Moores' North Liberty home was demolished in the 1980s to make way for a parking lot at the nearby Lutheran Church, but when I googled it recently, I saw it was still standing!


But back to Marjorie Grove; from the Asheville Times on August 9, 1923:


Mr. and Mrs. E.W. Grove announce the engagement of their daughter, Miss Marjorie Grove, to Mr. Kenneth Taylor Wood of Columbus, Ohio. The date of the wedding has not been announced, but it will take place in the early fall.


This announcement comes as a surprise to the many friends of Miss Grove and is of widespread social interest. Miss Grove is the attractive daughter of Mr. and Mrs. E.W. Grove of Asheville, and is a popular member of social sets in St. Louis and Asheville where she has made her home. She is also well known in many of the resorts of Florida and elsewhere. She has spent a great deal of her time in Asheville since Mr. and Mrs. Grove moved here about fifteen years ago. She is a dainty, petite girl of the blond type and has a charming vivacious manner that has won for her countless friends wherever she has been. She attended school at Colonial in Washington and also Scudders in New York and made many friends there. Many social events will be given in her honor during the remainder of the summer season.


Mr. Wood is a son of Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Dodge Wood of Columbus, Ohio. His father, Mr. Wood, is a prominent business man of Columbus and is connected with the Ohio State Paper Co. there. The Woods are well known in social circles in Columbus. Mr. Wood attended school at Ohio State and was graduated from Williams College in 1920. He is a member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity and is a prominent young business man of Columbus.


The marriage took place in the Grove home on August 14, 1923. The article about their marriage in the Asheville Times said Marjorie was the Groves' foster daughter. The couple honeymooned in Europe, sailing on the Leviathan for six weeks, and were to make Columbus, Ohio, their home. (I would note that my Barnett family moved to Asheville from Atlanta that same year, when my maternal grandfather Albert Barnett became the assistant manager of the Grove Park Inn under Grove son-in-law, Fred Seely. My mother would have been two years old.)


There is some confusion here, because her marriage license said she was born in St. Louis in 1901, whereas her 1910 census said she was born in 1896 in Tennessee, as were both of her parents. In addition, her last name was wrongly spelled Groves on her marriage license. Her passport application, for her European honeymoon voyage, states that she was born in Tennessee on November 21, 1901. I was never able to find a birth certificate for her. And I cannot find the Grove family's 1920 census anywhere, either in St. Louis or Asheville.


Edwin Grove's January 29, 1927 obituary in the Asheville Citizen-TImes included Marjorie as a surviving adopted daughter. At that point, she and Ken Wood had a two-year-old daughter, also named Marjorie. Perhaps Edwin built the river rock home in the hopes that he could entice Marjorie and Ken to move back to Asheville.


Marjorie and Ken's marriage only lasted a very few years. by June 1927, Marjorie Sr. had already divorced Ken and married Edward Saunders Johnson. He was a coal operator, recently divorced himself, and also lived in Columbus, although he had attended Asheville School for Boys. His family was very wealthy; in multiple censuses they were shown to have at least three servants. Perhaps Edward and Marjorie had a history; it makes one wonder if there was a love triangle there.


In the 1940 census, Edward's first wife, Martha Morehouse, who remarried a man named James K. Hamill, was shown living near Tampa, Florida, with James and Edward and Martha's son, Edward Moorhouse Johnson, Jr. It turns out that Martha married one more time to a man named Zettler. Her parents were fabulously wealthy, and Martha became a philanthropist who donated huge amounts of money to the Ohio State University; a rehab hospital there is named for her.


Marjorie's ex Kenneth Wood remarried a woman named Mildred Price a year later. He retained custody of their daughter, Marjorie Grove Wood, who married Andrew W. Burns in Columbus in 1950. There was no mention of the original Marjorie in the lengthy wedding write-up. Marjorie Jr. was said to be the daughter of Kenneth and Mildred. In those days you had to be pretty bad to not keep custody of your own daughter, and so there must be a story there.


I could find no more about the divorce online, but an article in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat from April 13, 1930, gives a hint about the reasons behind it. During her marriage to Ken Wood, Marjorie apparently spent a lot of money on clothing. She had racked up a bill of $5,573.33 in a Columbus clothing store shortly before the Depression hit! The clothing firm, which was never named, piled on still another lawsuit against the Grove estate. Apparently Marjorie had been bequeathed a monthly income in Grove Sr.'s will, and the clothing store sued to take some of her inheritance.


ANOTHER SUIT IS FILED AGAINST GROVE ESTATE


Clothier Brings Action Over Note of Millionaire's Adopted Daughter.


Another suit has been added to the numerous attacks which have been made against the estate of Edwin W. Grove, multi-millionaire head of the Paris Medicine Company, who died January 27, 1927.


The present plaintiff is a Columbus, Ohio clothing firm, which yesterday asked the Circuit Court here for a judgment to insure payment of a $5573.33 promissory note, said to have been executed by an adopted daughter of Grove during her residence in Columbus. The defendant, Mrs. Marjorie Grove Wood-Johnson was bequeathed a life income of $500 a month under the terms of Grove's will.


The court was asked to appoint a receiver to collect this income until the note is paid. According to the petition, Mrs. Johnson, then Mrs. Wood, executed the note in 1928, in paying of a clothing bill with the store. She is said to be living in Pass Christian, Mississippi.


Marjorie divorced Edward at some point and married for a third time a war hero and agronomist named Jaime Sears Morris. (Edward, who remarried, committed suicide in 1941 by drinking poison.) I couldn't find Marjorie in the 1940 census, but by1950 she and Morris showed up in the census living in Weslaco, Texas, which is near the Mexican border and McAllen, Texas. Jaime was single at the time of the 1940 census, living in Pensacola, Florida, going to pilot school at the U.S. Naval Air Station.


In addition to Jaime, living with Marjorie were two daughters: Mary was 21 (born in Ohio) and Betty was 19 (born in Illinois). I don't know if these were Marjorie's biological children or not, or who their biological father was; as mentioned, Jaime Morris was single just ten years prior, and he was at least fifteen years younger than Marjorie. I'm guessing the girls were fathered by Edward Johnson and adopted by Morris, but who knows? The family lived in Weslaco because Jaime was involved professionally with the Valley Experiment Station, which was an ongoing government agricultural research project, dealing with citrus and vegetable growing. He earned a bachelors degree and master of science degree from Texas A&M.


Jaime seems to have been a stand-up guy. In 1942, he received "a citation for heroic conduct in action in the face of heavy anti-aircraft fire, while bombing ships and shore stations in the Pacific area," according to the Corpus Christi Times. "During his duty in the Pacific he saw extensive action and participated in almost all of the important engagements in the Pacific. He was attached to a torpedo bombing squadron."


Marjorie died of a heart attack in 1966 in Austin, Texas, which is where she was buried. Her age was listed as 60, but she was really 65 years old. And her death certificate FINALLY gives me a hint of her true parentage: Edwin W. Grove (Sr.) was listed as her father, and a woman named Lucillle -- no last name given -- was listed as her mother.



I could find no obituary, but here is her death notice, which appeared in the Austin American-Statesman on Mary 13, 1966.



I strongly believe that Marjorie Grove was the illegitimate daughter of Edwin Grove, Sr., and a woman named Lucille. Gertrude must have accepted Marjorie and agreed to help raise her. This would square with Edwin Jr.'s suspicions that his father took lovers from time to time, and it would also help account for Grove giving into Gertie when it came to leaving more of his estate to her son, Edwin Jr. -- it gave her bargaining power.


Of course I can't prove it, but maybe the answer as to who Lucille was is right under our noses. In the 1910 census for the Grove family, taken in St. Louis, there was a woman named Lulu Granger who was said to be a family friend. I found a woman named Lucille Byers -- a strong possibility for the nickname "Lulu," a high school teacher in Austin, Texas, who had been born in Tennessee, who was a similar age. And Edwin traveled a lot in that time frame, including visits to Texas.


Lillian married Charles T. Granger -- an accountant for a wholesale grocery -- member of a prestigious Austin family in 1901 (the same year Margery was born), and they subsequently had two daughters and a son, who were several years younger than Marjorie. (The son became a prominent Austin architect.) Could Lucille have given Marjorie away to the Groves to raise prior to her marrying Mr. Granger, and was visiting her in St. Louis in 1910? What makes me think this is the right Lucille is the fact that Marjorie, after leaving two of her husbands, ended up in Austin, Texas, where she met and married her third husband, Jaime Morris. Perhaps with both of the senior Groves being dead, Marjorie sought out her biological mother in Texas when she was down on her luck. Lucille died in Austin in 1962 at the age of 86, four years before Marjorie's death, which also took place in Austin.


And so that's my take on the mysterious daughter of Edwin Grove for whom the river rock house was built!


As I was writing about the Groves, I found an in-depth article about the properties Mr. Grove developed in Grove Park and North Asheville in the early 1900s. He was responsible for much of my childhood stompin' grounds. It is definitely worth a read: Grove Park Historic District.


Next I will discuss Grove's son-in-law, Fred Seely.







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