Edith Durrell Marshall

Annie Louise Megrue Bell - “Aunt Puss”

By

Edith Megrue Durrell Marshall (Grammy)

b. 1899 & d. 1996

(Originally written in 1961 and edited in 1967),rewritten and edited by Edward C. Marshall III, her grandson.

Note: This story includes details of the Megrue, Bell and Madden Families, some not very pretty.

Annie M. Bell, widow of Louis Valentine Bell left an estate in 1963 of some $6 million dollars. She was 92, and a resident of New York City and South Salem, NY where she had a summer home.

Her husband had been a prominent financier of New York, a man of wealth, member of the NY Stock Exchange. He died in 1925 and left her the income of a sizeable estate, left in trust funds for eventual distribution to charitable institutions mainly, but from which she received the income for life. Her father was Joseph Rust Megrue (JRM), who in later life lived in New York City, but had been a native of Cincinnati, Ohio and had made a comfortable fortune in the beer and whiskey business in Ohio and Lawrenceburg, Indiana being interested in breweries and distilleries there, before coming east, where he went into the railroad business.

He (JRM) died in 1910, and from her father Mrs. Bell received a total of $78,148 in investments, some cash, but chiefly oil stocks. Her brother Enoch was executor of their father’s estate, and influenced by his wife Martha, refused to pay her the entire amount due her—saying, “She had a rich husband and did not need it!” As a result, there was a suit, she won and they did not speak for 40 years! (Incidentally, Enoch parlayed his share to some million and a half dollars, which went to his second wife and her sons whom he adopted. He never worked a day in his life. Practically his entire estate was in Standard Oil stock inherited from his father. He was miserly until his wife (#1) died and he married again.)

Mrs. Bell was a thrifty woman, interested in increasing her estate. Her income from her husband’s (Louis V. Bell “LVB”) estate was sizeable and more than she wanted to spend. She lived well after his death in an apartment in New York and later in a luxurious apartment hotel on Park Avenue, where she died. In addition, she bought and refurnished an estate (Note: called West Wind) at South Salem, New York near the Connecticut border, close to Ridgefield, Conn.—a lovely place with spacious grounds and a wide view. This cost $65,000, plus furnishings which were beautiful and in good taste.

She had in her later years as her companion, her aunt Mrs. John A. Durrell (Edith Megrue) (younger than the niece) and who died but a year before she did at age 88.

So with the nucleus of the $78,000 from the Joseph Rust Megrue estate, $43,666 her portion of a trust from Mr. Bell’s father Isaac Bell, and her savings each year from her income from the LVB trusts from 1925 (his death year) until 1954 of $900,000, she (as her banker stated, with cleverness and shrewdness) built up her estate to a gross of some $6,000,000 in 1963, at the time of her death. She kept minute accounts of her transactions, in her beautiful handwriting, showing her yearly early savings, anywhere from $10 to $50 thousand a year.

In her will she left small bequests to cousins, her servants of many years, but the bulk of the money left after the taxes and court and legal fees were paid (this took some 70% of the principle!) went to her 4 grandsons, the sons of Edward and Joseph Madden (deceased) of Lexington, Kentucky by her first husband John E. Madden. She left no money to charity. Her entire interest in life had been to build this estate for her sons and leave a larger estate to them than their father. She did! John Madden left only $4 million!

However, in due fairness, she was no miser in the true sense, she lived graciously, in dignity and pleasantly, travelled some with Mrs. Durrell before she was too old, and friends and family were interested in her. She was a gracious lady of the old school.

The reason for including data concerning Louis V. Bell in my family papers is because of the great influence he had on my life and my family.

I was only six years old when my Mother’s niece Annie Megrue divorced her husband John E. Madden divorced her husband John E. Madden of Lexington, KY with much publicity and later, in 1906 she married Louis V. Bell of New York. She was a year older than my Mother—Mary Megrue Durrell (Mrs. Harry P. Durrell). Though only my half first cousin, being so much older I called her “Aunt Puss” (a nickname her brother Enoch Megrue II had tagged her with when they were children). Her father Joseph R. Megrue was my mother’s half brother, old enough to be her father. My grandfather Enoch G. Megrue married twice and had children (Mary, Edith and William) about the same age as his grandchildren (Annie & Enoch II) by his first wife. His first wife was Ann Levi and 2nd was Mary Elizabeth Scull.

Being so near in age they were friends from childhood and were know as the “three Megrue girls.” Their mothers were close friends and after the tragic suicide of Annie’s mother, the girls were drawn even closer.

Annie’s elopement with and marriage to John E. Madden in 1890 was an unhappy one. Insanely jealous of her great beauty, he kept her almost cloistered. She had a keen, alert mind and was greatly responsible for his early success, keeping books at Hamburg Place, his horse-breeding farm at Lexington, KY.

Finally, his infidelities and brutalities were too much for this gently reared girl to bear, so she left him, taking with her their two sons and came to her Aunts Edith and Mary Megrue Durrell, who saw her through a legal separation in 1905. Later, she went to New York to be near her father who had left Cincinnati some years before. While there, John Madden to get even and to hurt her, for he could not break her spirit, as much as he tried, kidnapped the boys from the school they were attending and took them back to Kentucky.

The Cincinnati Judge had given her custody of her two sons, but in Kentucky during this period, women had no legal status and were considered mere chattels of their husbands. Consequently, after trying all means available, she still could not get her sons returned to her. She never saw her sons again until 1925, when they were grown and were men enough to defy their father. Madden was a sadistic man and tried to poison the children’s minds against their mother and her family. So they were greatly surprised and shocked to find their mother at age 68 to be a beautiful and cultured lady, and the opposite to which they had been led to believe.

No one in her family had understood why she eloped with John Madden. Granted, he was handsome, tall and vigorous, but he was uneducated and crude, had trained as a pugilist (boxer), was of Irish stock from the Pennsylvania coalfields. He was just getting started in the horse-breeding business when she met him at a race track in Cincinnati. She was an expert horsewoman and was small, slender and blue eyed, with auburn glints in her dark hair, so naturally Madden was attracted to her.

After the loss of her boys, she married Louis V. Bell, a New Yorker from a distinguished family, who did much to counteract the rough treatment she had had at the hands of her first husband. Bell (LVB) was a widower and a cultured, polished gentleman, a man of the world, a man of wealth. After their marriage they lived in Paris for about five years, a city he loved for it had many associations for him. He had spent much time there as a youth and was a great admirer of all things French, its history, its culture, its cities and countryside. He had relatives living in Europe as well and was connected with noble families and diplomats. LVB was well-born, well travelled, cultivated, a gourmet and art collector. On her he lavished beautiful clothes, furs, and jewels and was proud of her intelligence and beauty.

After they returned from their sojourn in Europe, they bought a handsome house at 312 W. 75th Street, New York and also build a summer estate at Little Silver on the Shrewsbury River, New Jersey. Here they played gentleman farmer, raising chickens, hogs, sheep vegetables and fruit, taking prizes at the nearby county fairs. They called it “Winganeek”, an Indian name for “home sweet home.” The NY residence they filled to the roof with fine furniture, collections of all kinds, assembled on his travels around the world when he was a young man and which had long been kept in storage.

Here they lived luxuriously, but quietly, entertaining friends and family. The John Durrell’s (Auntie and Uncle John) were with them often, joining them on a great many trips abroad and motor trips thru the USA. My sister Ruth and I with our parents also visited them in New York and New Jersey. During our college years at Sweet Briar College, we spent many spring vacations with them. Mr. Bell was particularly fond of young people and they often gave lavish parties for the sons and daughters of their friends—The Ferrises, Talcots, Meerts, Kenyons, etc.

Often Aunt Puss and Uncle Louis visited Pleasant Ridge (Cincinnati) spending several weeks or even months or more at a time. Mr. Bell even built two wings on the Durrell house—a huge bath in the rear, and a two room suite to the north to accommodate old colored Florence Harris from Lexington, who often came up to help in the kitchen and to see her beloved “Mistress”. She was an amazing old Negro, huge, a magnificent cook, former nurse to the Madden boys, and fond of little girls, Ruth and me.

Uncle Louis adored children and in return they loved him. He has a knack with them, knew how to talk to them like adults, how to play with them, inventing fabulous games and parties to amuse them (and himself!). When on trips he sent many toys and souvenirs to Ruth and me—he was literally a fairy godfather to us and our playmates.

He gave us a tiny brown Shetland pony, a little mare named “TRILBY”, with a saddle and harness and a smart little yellow wheeled cart seating four children. We showed her at the Carthage Fair and won many blue ribbons with her. We kept her until we went away to college! She was stabled in our grandfather Durrell’s barn across the street on Ridge Avenue.

He invented games, like “hunting ducks”—where he bought a dozen of more white ducks from a nearby farmer, with Uncle John and father they were hidden around the neighborhood for us to find and take home! What a sight! And what laughs he had seeing the little ones dragging a huge gunny sack home with a struggling duck inside.

“Standing on one leg” was another of his inventions, whereby the children of the neighborhood , a dozen or so, were lined up, the child standing the longest on one leg received a dollar bill and that in the day of 100 good pennies to the dollar! Big money in those days. There were trips to the ZOO—trips to the local drugstore to buy fancy French soaps and perfumes—luncheons at the Sinton Hotel, where we had Baked Alaska for the first time, theatre parties to Keith’s Vaudeville House, and saw Harry Lauder, the inimitable Scotch comedian.

One Christmas he hired the Pleasant Ridge Town Hall for a movie, in the days of the beginnings of the making of motion pictures. It was one, if not the first, movie shown in Pleasant Ridge titled “The Last Days of Pompeii.” After the show were souvenirs and ice cream in forms of fruit and flowers and toys for all. One sad note was the accident which kept Mr. Bell and father from enjoying the fun. The night before, the janitor in his zeal to have the hall in perfect order lifted the furnace registers in the floor to clear them and forgot to put them back. That same evening, dad and Mr. Bell went down to inspect and fell through to the cellar! There were no broken bones, both men were badly shaken up and dad received a deep cut on a leg, the scar from which remained with him always.

In the summer, there were baseball games played with tennis racquets and balls on Grandfather Durrell’s lawn, tennis tournaments on our and/or Aunt Camille Durrell’s court, croquet tournaments; Fourth of July daylight fireworks and paper balloons heated with hot air from lighted excelsior pads; picnics in Baxter’s Woods; sleigh rides in the winter with a horse from Uncle Will Megrue’s livery stable! Life was ok so simple in the Village of Pleasant Ridge, in the early days of the century.

Another gala day was one Christmas time. Feeling sorry for two old ladies who ran a local notion store, who had overstocked and Christmas was only a day or so off, Uncle Louis bought out their entire stock of toys (probably a $100.00 dollar bill did the trick) and he gave a party. It was held at Grandfather Durrell’s on Ridge Avenue and the entertainment consisted of having all the neighborhood children, 40 or more, march around and round through the hall, dining room, library and back to the living room to the huge Christmas tree and select a toy. After this came the ice cream in gay colors and shapes, and then home loaded with their treasures. Never before or after was there such a party. I still treasure a gray stuffed elephant and a fuzzy dachshund which Mr. Bell gave to Grandfather.

He loved to shop and many a dress or coat or hat or purse came in packages from New York. From Europe came a treasured charm necklace, an enameled locket, a tiny blue Swiss watch. He was a man of impeccable taste. No wonder we all loved him.

My sister Ruth and my visits were full to the brim. He was a lover of American history, so we were taken to see everything of historical importance, the Jumel Mansion, Fraunces Tavern, Old Trinity Church, Wall Street, Chinatown, the Battery (where some of his Bell ancestors had lived in the early days of New York); Asbury Park, NJ; a month at Spring Lake, NJ at the Essex Sussex Hotel when we were older; a trip to Washington en route home from a visit to Winganeek, with a Boston Bull Terrier named “Doe” and a gunnysack of live crabs from the Shrewsbury River to show the kids back home. How my mother stood it I’ll never know, especially since Ruth got violently sea sick when merely setting foot on a train, something she never got over until the invention of Dramamine.

We were not the only children who benefitted from his kindness and generosity, for in NY or elsewhere, he treated children of not only his friends and family, but of those who served him. He sent quite a number through college, including my sister and myself to Sweet Briar College. Our only obligation was a letter once a week. I am not depreciating what my parents did for us for we had a wonderful childhood, were loved and sheltered, with a large family connection of Durrell’s around us. But Uncle Louis and Aunt Puss and Auntie and Uncle John added the “frostin” on the cake.

As we grew up, he was interested in our beaus, and gave us two lovely dance parties at a hall in Norwood during our college days. He was delighted with my favorite beau and pleased when I married the “boy from across the street”—Ed Marshall. He gave us a lavish wedding gift, a house on Ridge Avenue across from Auntie and around the corner from mothers and Ed’s parents. He had such fun supervising the remodeling of the old house, bought from Dr. George Sikes. He died just before Ann (Marshall Whitley) was born, of cancer at age 72 and he left me a nice bequest.

So, all this is why I include Louis Valentine Bell in my family history. He was no doubt the greatest influence in my life and as the Readers Digest says, “an unforgettable character.”

Retyped from the original draft manuscript by Edward C. Marshall III Greenville, South Carolina, December 8, 2009