Joseph Bushnell Vandergrift

JOSEPH BUSHNELL VANDERGRIFT, son of Jacob Jay Vandergrift, by his first wife Henrietta Virginia Morrow, born at Oil City, Pennsylvania, August 23, 1868; died at Pittsburgh, in the same State, May 23, 1915. His father, the story of whose life and endeavor is told wherever the flow of natural gas glows in the white heat of a furnace, or whenever the yellow gleam of a petroleum lamp brightens a home, was the well-known oil trade operator and Pittsburgh capitalist to whose enterprise the town of Vandergrift is a monument. The son received his earlier education at Media, Pennsylvania, his later at Rutgers College, New Jersey. He began business life as a shoe merchant and was subsequently an operator in coal, but withdrew from active business pursuits some ten years ago. Cherishing the history and traditions of a Colonial and Revolutionary ancestry, he was in membership with many of the organizations which perpetuate the memory of the early leaders of the new nation: The Holland Society of New York, the Colonial Society of Pennsylvania, the Swedish Colonial Society of Pennsylvania, and the Descendants of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence; also with the Historical and Genealogical Societies of Pennsylvania, the Lambs' Club of New York, and the Masonic fraternity. His sons, Jacob Jay Vandergrift and John Montanye Vandergrift, the issue of his first wife, Diana Montanye, survive, as does his widow, nee Sybil May Humrod.

(Source: Annual Proceedings of the Pennsylvania Society of Sons of the Revolution, 1915-1916, Philadelphia, Pa., 1916, p. 63.)

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Never one to ignore a really good mystery, the latest information on the bones found in a mansion once owned by the Vandergrifts sent me on a wild chase. The Vandergrift estate was built in 1901 with money inherited by Joseph Bushnell Vandergrift from his father Captain Jacob Jay Vandergrift. Captain Vandergrift made his fortune in the oil business. The Vandergrifts lived in the Pittsburgh and Oil City Pennsylvania area at the time of Captain Vandergrift’s death in 1899.

Joseph Bushnell Vandergrift was one of 10 children, 6 boys and 4 girls. The Vandergrift estate, Vancroft Manor, now called Aspen Manor, in West Virginia was bought in 1895 for the boys as a get away, hunting lodge built on 500 acres. In 1904, Joseph B. Vandergrift woke up, got dressed and walked away from the house, never to return. They say that when he left the stable was burned to the ground and his wife, Diana Mix Montanye and the stable man, that it was claimed that she was having an affair with, were both dead and burned.

At the time Vandergrift had a son John M. Vandergrift was 11. By 1905, I found Joseph Bushnell Vandergrift traveling out of the country with a woman named Sybil M. Clifton. The following year I found Joseph traveling once again with his wife, Sybil M. Vandergrift. There is documentation showing his father getting a passport for John and his second wife, Sybil.

More searching would uncover the death notice of Joseph in 1915 and name as survivors his wife and sons, John and J. J. Vandergrift. Within 6 months John would marry his stepmother. In 1922, John would be in court asking to have his estranged wife stopped from selling off his inheritance. He claimed that they had separated in November of 1921 and Sybil was living outside of the marital home. 

By May of 1923 the newspapers would hold yet another story about John and Sybil, the beginning of their divorce.

May 29 1923, Kingsport Times

MAN SUED FOR DIVORCE BY HIS STEP-MOTHER

New York. —John M. Vandergrift, a grandson of one of the founders of the Standard Oil Company, has been sued for divorce by his stepmother, Mrs. Sybil Vandergrift, it developed here today.

After his father died at Pittsburgh in 1915 he married his stepmother, twelve years his senior.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/88238177/joseph-bushnell-vander...

https://www.ancestry.com/genealogy/records/joseph-bushnell-vandergr...

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Vandergrift-198

https://brookecountywvgenealogy.org/van-croft-mansion-visit.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancroft

https://books.google.com/books?id=UjMSAAAAYAAJ&lpg=PA63&ots=bC1E8kA...

https://catrackgraphics.com/2009/11/15/more-than-bones/

http://www.pa-roots.org/data/read.php?785,662684