The Remarkable Rise of Eliza Jumel (24 page)

Now that he was retired from business and living at the mansion, he and Eliza's financial interests were essentially the same: to live on their income and manage their country property productively. As long as she could continue to live in the style to which she was accustomed—having her own carriage and using travel as an escape; as long as she need not fear that Stephen might sell their properties to repay creditors or assist his relatives, Eliza could trust him to manage their money and collect their rents, as he had always done.

The mansion with its surrounding acres functioned as a working farm. The population of the property fluctuated with the seasons, rising in the summer when Stephen hired men to work the land. Salaries were low, although not atypical for the region and time period. In 1831 Stephen paid farm laborers approximately $7.50 a month. The gardener, whose duties required more skill and background knowledge, received $8. An overseer, Gilbert Travis, hired in late March 1831, earned $150 per year. All of these men would have received room and board as well as their wages, a benefit that made the jobs more desirable. Nonresident laborers were employed as needed for a single day, a few days, or a specific project. Eliza handled the hiring of the female servants, as is indicated by a note in Stephen's hand:
“Madame Clark has made an arrangement with Madame Jumel at a rate of twelve shillings per week beginning Saturday the third in the morning. Madame Jumel has advanced her five dollars.”
¹⁵

Like many country landowners who had difficulty attracting household help, Eliza and Stephen turned to indentured servants from time to time. In February 1830 Stephen advertised for the return of two runaways: “a lad by the name of William Carr, about 16 years old, stout built, round and full face,” who disappeared on December 19, and “a girl, Louise Pai, 8 years old,” who absconded on January 30.
¹⁶
Whether William farmed under Stephen's supervision or did housework under Eliza's, Louise, given her age and gender, would have been under the care of the mistress of the house.

Was Eliza impatient with her or harsh? Later there were indications that she was a demanding employer, but she would not necessarily have been so to a young girl. Besides her fondness for children, she knew what it was like to be a frightened apprentice in a strange household. She had been only two years older than Louise when she was indentured as a servant herself. The girl may have been too young to thrive apart from her family. After being placed in another home, she ran away again.
¹⁷

23

I
n July or August 1831, Eliza set off on another extended voyage with Mary.
¹
They were headed for the Jumel properties in central New York to collect the rents and escape the heat of high summer. But the trip would prove profitable for nonmonetary reasons as well. During this journey, Eliza identified and secured a husband for thirty-year-old Mary.
²

In 1880 Nelson Chase looked half a century into the past and described the circumstances of his initial acquaintance with his future wife. They met in the tiny hamlet of Worcester, New York, in Otsego County. He was a law student in Schuyler Crippen's office, he tells us, and “boarded in his family.” Besides carrying on a legal practice and serving as the local postmaster, Crippen acted as the Jumels' agent, watching over their lands in the nearby town of Decatur and the neighboring county of Schoharie. Eliza called on Crippen, and Nelson was introduced to Mary.
³

Eliza and Mary stayed for a time in the region, joining Nelson as boarders “in Mr. Crippen's family.”
⁴
As the weeks passed, the young law student developed what he described as a “very intimate
friendship” with Mary.
⁵
Then Eliza stepped in, as Nelson had explained more fully in 1873: “Madame Jumel said to me, I perceive there is a friendship between you and my niece Miss Mary; she added, if I and Mary could agree, she would be happy to have me for a son-in-law; that if we got married, she would expect us to come and live with herself and her husband on their place; she said that Mary was her adopted daughter and was to be her heir.”
⁶

The prospect of a wife with financial expectations was tempting to a youth with his way to make in the world. Nelson, born in Duanesburgh, in Schenectady County, New York, was the son of a builder, Ebenezer Chase, and Susannah Sheldon.
⁷
He worked initially as a clerk in a country store—probably from the time he was twelve or thirteen—first in the little village of Esperance on Schoharie Creek; then briefly in Troy; and finally for three or four years in Cooperstown. In 1830, aged nineteen, he moved to Worcester, where he began his legal studies.
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Relocating to the New York City region could open up profitable opportunities for a budding lawyer, aside from what the Jumels might do for him and Mary.

For Mary, too, the marriage must have had its appeal. She had been educated as a gentlewoman, but her illegitimate birth and the gossip that swirled around her adoptive mother would have made it difficult to attract socially prominent suitors. She was still single at thirty—a telling indicator that Nelson might be her best (and perhaps only) option for matrimony. Although he was not a gentleman by birth, his profession would give him better-than-average financial prospects and entry into the upper-middle class.
⁹
As William Wirt, a future attorney general of the United States, wrote in 1803, “The bar in America is the road to honor.”
¹⁰

If Nelson had reservations about Mary's age—she was ten years his senior—Eliza knew how to overcome them.
¹¹
When he was asked in 1837 if he received “any estate with [Mary] on marriage,” he answered briefly, “I did.” To the follow-up question, “What did you receive?” the answer was, bluntly, “Money.”
¹²
The funds probably came from Eliza's sale of a farm that she and Stephen owned in central New York. Whether Stephen was aware of the January 2,
1832, transaction is an open question, but the deed was not registered until after his death.
¹³

The marriage took place at Schuyler Crippen's home in Worcester on a Sunday evening in January 1832. “Mr. Crippen's family” was present, Nelson recalled, “some neighbors who had become acquainted with my wife, and the Rev. Mr. Bassett who performed the marriage ceremony.” There was also the family of Seth Chase, “who lived a near neighbor of Mr. Crippen, and a variety of other persons whose names do not occur to me,” Nelson said.
¹⁴
The occasion was recorded in the
Albany Argus
: “Married, at Worcester, Otsego County, on the evening of the 15th instant, by the Rev. Mr. Bassett. NELSON CHASE, Esq., to Miss Mary Jumel Bowne, adopted daughter of Stephen Jumel, Esq., of New-York.”
¹⁵

After the marriage, the young couple remained in Worcester for two months, continuing to lodge with Crippen. On February 29 they sold a 50½-acre farm in the town of Decatur, probably part of the real estate that Eliza had transferred to Mary when Stephen was in France.
¹⁶
Some years later, the Chases would sell a 110-acre farm in Worcester.
¹⁷
Thanks to Eliza's foresight, Mary was not a penniless bride.

In early March, Mary and Nelson left Worcester for Mount Stephen. Nelson described his first action on their arrival: “I handed Mr. Jumel a copy of the
Argus
[that contained the wedding announcement]. He read the notice. My wife and his wife were both present at the time.”
¹⁸
If Nelson had been worried about his reception, Stephen's good-natured welcome dispelled any worries. He gave Nelson a “very slight pinch” on the cheek in “very friendly” fashion, and jokingly took to calling his new son-in-law “Governor.”
¹⁹

Nelson recalled much later that Stephen spoke English with “very good facility but with a marked accent.” At sixty-six, he wore his years lightly: “he was very light of foot, though weighing a pretty heavy weight; I suppose he would have weighed in the neighborhood of two hundred pounds. He was as light on his feet as quite a good many younger men than he would be. He had fine spirits, in [
sic
] good health, regular appetite, was a good sound sleeper, and
was cheerful and full of fun. As bright a man as I ever met with,” Nelson added.
²⁰

According to Nelson, Stephen called his wife “Eliza,” and “she called him ‘Mr. Jumel'”—a mode of address that seems formal today, but was normal at the time, especially when a wife addressed her husband in the presence of others. In the European fashion, they had separate bedrooms, just as they had had in France.
²¹

The Jumels knew how to hold household and entertained rarely; “they were very economical indeed,” Nelson said. Nelson accompanied Stephen on visits to John M. Bradhurst and Dr. Samuel Watkins, both near neighbors, and Jacobus Dykeman, who lived farther away, near the northern tip of Manhattan Island.
²²
Nelson also joined his father-in-law on his occasional trips into Manhattan. There Stephen would do the marketing, pick up letters, collect rent from his and Eliza's downtown retail tenant, Michael Werckmeister, and call on friends.
²³

The ladies of the house would have paid calls too, but Nelson mentions only one. About a week after his arrival in New York, he, his wife, and mother-in-law visited Maria Jones—at once Eliza's sister and Mary's mother. Nelson met Maria, her daughters Eliza and Louisa, and her younger son, Stephen. The older son, William Ballou Jones, he met later. There must have been regular intercourse with the Jones household, since Nelson would attend Louisa's wedding and was acquainted with Eliza Jones's husband, Charles John Tranchell.
²⁴

At home at the mansion, daily life centered around “the drawing room, on the first floor of the house, where the family used to meet together every day.” Stephen would supervise work on the house, garden, and vineyard or, on inclement days, look through his papers.
²⁵
With the help of Lesparre and Ulysses, he continued to pursue old business debts in France and his claim to a share in his late uncle's property in Saint-Domingue.
²⁶

Mary and Nelson would live with the Jumels for only two months. Eliza arranged for them to move to lodgings she rented for them in New Jersey—in Hoboken or Jersey City. The relocation probably
took place May 1, still the traditional moving day in the region.
²⁷
Neither city was much more than a country village at the time, but both had easy ferry access to New York, which would make it possible for Nelson to resume his legal studies. (Riding ten miles into Manhattan from Mount Stephen would have been impractical on a daily basis.) In after years, Nelson remembered the region in which he and Mary had set up household fondly: “Jersey was one of the most tranquil places then on the face of the globe almost.”
²⁸