Here She Comes, Miss America

In 1838, American high society was greatly enlivened by a delightful young Italian visitor, America Vespucci, a direct descendant of the man who gave his name to their country.  Her story captured hearts and filled newspaper columns:  She had been strictly raised in a Florentine convent, but when, at the age of seventeen, she had been forced to serve as maid of honor to the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, she rebelled and joined “La Jeune Italie,” a secret society dedicated to Italian independence.  She even saw battle in 1832, conducting herself “with great gallantry,” and suffering a severe injury at the hands of an Austrian dragoon.

After being exiled for her political activities, she found refuge at the court of France.  And now, this exotic, lovely young woman was in the United States seeking citizenship and a grant of land where she might finally have a permanent home after all her adventures.

She became an instant sensation among the political and social leaders of Washington, D.C., attending casual gatherings and formal state dinners where she entranced everyone with her beauty and sparkling charm.  She was described as “of fine features, symmetrically formed, of the perfect Italian style of beauty, with more of Juno’s characteristics than of Venus’ peculiarities in its excellency.  Her figure was commanding, full, strongly set up, and finely moulded.”  Her eyes were “wonderfully brilliant,” and her hair “black as jet and of extraordinary length and abundance.”  The Countess of Blessington described her conversation as “interesting and original, full of animation…She possesses a certain wild, unsteady energy and cleverness…tormented with a constant desire to excite attention.”

Under the influence of that commanding figure and brilliant eye, Senator Thomas Hart Benton was helpless.  He personally presented the Senate with a petition on her behalf.  “She is without a country, without fortune, and without protection,” he declared.  “She asks that we grant her a corner of the land which bears the name of her glorious forebear, and for the right of citizenship among those who call themselves Americans.”

Alas, the relevant Senate committees ruled against her request as being without precedent, but they suggested she instead present her case to the American people.  Surely, such “generous, patriotic, and enlightened people” would help her in the way that Congress was formally forbidden to do.

The people did not fail to respond.  Washingtonians—from Congressmen to Supreme Court justices—started a fund for a national movement to raise the money she needed to start her new life in America.  She went on a lengthy tour of all the major cities in the country, captivating everyone she saw.  “Her path,” a contemporary wrote, “was strewn with roses, open hands, and confiding hearts.”  An obviously smitten man who met Vespucci in New Orleans compared her to Cleopatra.  America was “the most accomplished, elegant, and interesting woman that ever landed on this continent since the days of her great ancestor…her discourse seemed to be composed of ‘thoughts that breathe and words that burn.’”  He went on to describe her as a “union of high birth, mental power, lofty aspirations, and generous impulses, blended with refinement of manners, and the whole crowned by the utmost affability and kindness…there was no throne in Europe, which she would not elevate by her wisdom.”  

Vespucci seemed well on her way to becoming a national icon when, in the spring of 1840, she suddenly sailed for Europe with the startling announcement that she did not want any money that was not “a national gift.”

The “New York Evening Star” did not take this ingratitude lightly.  They retaliated with a bitter exposé of this strange visitor, alleging that she had had a scandalous affair with the Duke of Orleans, which caused the French royal family to engineer this tour of the U.S. just to get her safely out of the way.  “It would have been a rare joke indeed,” they snorted, if she had actually gotten Congress to fall for her hoaxes.

However, America had not seen the last of America.  She landed in Boston in November of 1841, this time as “Contessa Helene America.”  Rather unbelievably, she turned up several days later at one of Boston’s most exclusive society balls, and no one so much as turned a hair.  Her strange initial arrival, her even stranger departure, and her just-plain-bizarre return under a new cognomen were shrugged off by one and all, and she was as adored and fêted as before.

We next hear of America Vespucci—or Contessa Helene, or whoever she was at the moment—living “in a state of immoral intimacy” in Ogdensburg, New York, with a wealthy German merchant named George Parish.  A too-weird-to-be-true story—but one that many to this day insist is historical fact—says that Vespucci had become the mistress of Martin Van Buren’s playboy son John.  One night, while he was playing poker with Parish, John lost all his money, and finally put up his lady as a stake, wagering “ownership” of her on a toss of his last gold coin.  Parish won the toss, so the legend goes, and got the girl.

Whatever the initial circumstances of their union may have been, Parish and Vespucci lived together peacefully--if, in the eyes of their neighbors, sinfully--for nearly twenty years.  A local historian said Vespucci was ostracized by most of the local society, causing her to live almost reclusively, but she was someone with “a great heart,” who “was always doing things for people in distress.”  Her story was not granted a happy ending, however.  In 1856, Parish’s older brother died in Germany, and his family summoned him home to assume the family title of Baron von Leftonberg—and, of course, to find a bride worthy of his status.  There was no place in his life for an Italian mistress.  Parish agreed—whether with regret or relief is impossible to know—and packed the aging, bespectacled Vespucci off to France.  He granted her an allowance, but they never met again.

Vespucci—who apparently had genuinely loved Parish—was devastated.  It was certainly a dismal end for someone who had been such a dazzling adventuress, but the moralists held that it only served her right.  A New York paper called her “a lonely, sad, and heart-broken woman, who but for her folly might have left a glittering instead of a clouded name on the pages of history.”  She died in Paris in 1866.

The most curious thing about Vespucci’s career is that with all the raves about her charms, and the tut-tutting about her morals, it was largely ignored by her contemporaries that she had been unmasked as a brazen, if ingenious, fraud.  In the late 1840s, the American counsel in Genoa, C. Edwards Lester, began researching a book on the great explorer Amerigo Vespucci.  While interviewing Vespucci’s numerous descendants in Florence, he happened to meet Miss America’s family, who were living in genteel poverty.  And they were “deeply chagrined” by their famous relative’s “barefooted deceptions.”  It seems that her stories of her convent upbringing, her time at the court of the Grand Duchess, her role in the Italian resistance, her intimacy with the French royal family—were all just so many taradiddles.  Oh, and her real name was Elena.  

Elena, it seems, had been an “indocile and unmanageable” child who grew up to be “the mistress of some dozen men.”  Having made herself infamous at home, she “had the impudence to ask our Government for a grant of land for herself, as the only descendant of the Vespucci family.”  The name change was to make herself more attractive to patriotic Americans.  Lester published all this interesting information, but evidently few read or cared about his revelations.

And, really, why should anyone have cared?  Say what you will about America/Elena, she seems to have been a thoroughly enjoyable play-actor.  As “America Vespucci” she brought some much-needed fun to society and splendid copy for the newspapers, at no real cost to anyone.  She settled down to make Parish a devoted companion for many years, and took her eventual dismissal with dignity.  In short, she gives the impression of a woman spirited enough to seek a novel escape from a dull, limiting existence.

Congress should have given her that land grant for sheer gumption alone.

The Great Diamond Mine Hoax

I suppose that, deep down, all of us fantasize about an unexpected fortune falling effortlessly into our laps.  Usually such thoughts stay harmless daydreams.  However, every now and then, someone is offered what appears to be the chance to make such dreams real.  Unfortunately, such an opportunity generally causes these people to take their common sense and throw it into an elevator shaft, with the result that what they most often get is not wealth, but mayhem.

On the bright side, these people tend to find their way into my blog.

Our story revolves around two Kentuckians, Phil Arnold and his cousin John Slack.  In the mid-19th century, the pair went to California to try their luck at prospecting.  They had some success, at one point selling a claim for $50,000.  One day in February 1872, the cousins entered the Bank of California in San Francisco.  Arnold asked a teller to deposit a small leather pouch, just for safekeeping.  The teller agreed, but said he would need to see the contents in order to write a receipt.  The man was stunned to learn that the pouch contained a small fortune in uncut diamonds, rubies, and garnets.

After Arnold and Slack left the bank, the teller told the bank’s president, William C. Ralston, about this unusual deposit.  Ralston assumed their clients had discovered a diamond mine, and, sensing an enticing business opportunity, sent bank employees to track down Arnold and Slack to discuss a possible collaboration.

When the Kentuckians were seated in Ralston’s office, the banker asked about the gems.  The prospectors told him they came from a mine they had discovered in Arizona.  The site held promise of spectacular wealth, but unfortunately, it was located in territory controlled by hostile Apaches.  Ralston informed them that he knew of a group of financiers who were willing to brave the risks and buy the mine from them.  Arnold and Slack expressed cautious interest.  They said they were willing to escort an expert of Ralston’s choosing to inspect the mine, but only if the man agreed to travel to and from the mine blindfolded.  After all, it would scarcely do to have the mine’s exact location become known too soon.  Ralston agreed.

Before long, Ralston’s representative, a miner named David Colton, hit the road with the Kentuckians.  The trio soon arrived in Butte, Montana.  Arnold and Slack explained to Colton that the mine was really in Colorado--they just said it was in Arizona to guard against claim jumpers.  Their journey ended at a mesa in Jackson County, where Colton was finally allowed to remove his blindfold.  His companions invited the “expert” to dig around and see what he might find.

Colton began scooping out sand with his hands.  Imagine his delight when, before long, he uncovered a handful of uncut diamonds.  The Kentuckians suggested that he keep two of the diamonds to be examined.  After he selected two of the gems, he was again blindfolded and led back to San Francisco, no doubt with visions of dollar signs dancing in his head for the entire trip.

The two diamonds were examined by the leading jewelers Sloan’s and Tiffany’s.  Both companies confirmed they were authentic.

Ralston and his fellow financiers wanted to send a second “expert,” Henry Janin, to examine the mine.  They pointed out that while Colton was an experienced gold miner, Janin was a professional mining engineer with a reputation for never having made a mistake.  Arnold and Slack cheerfully agreed.

The expedition with Janin was identical to the one with Colton.  Blindfold.  Mesa.  Dig.  Jackpot!  Janin figured that the mesa could be worth $5 million dollars per acre, and if the land around it was as fruitful, the value could be in the millions.  Naturally, he did not mention these estimates to Arnold and Slack.

When Ralston and his associates heard Janin’s report, they secretly invested $10 million to create the “San Francisco and New York Mining and Commercial Company.”  It had 100,000 shares of stock, none of which was offered to the public.  (Among the investors were Horace Greeley, Charles Tiffany, Nathan Rothschild, and several leading Union Civil War Generals.)

Ralston offered the cousins $600,000 for the mine.  Arnold and Slack did some indignant grumbling about the ridiculously low price, but then, without waiting too long, accepted.  No sooner was the money in their hands that they fled back home to Kentucky.  They left no forwarding address.

Before Ralston’s company could start mining the land, another firm managed to deduce the location of the mesa and began digging.  The more they dug, the more appalled they got.  It soon became clear that the only diamonds in the area were the ones planted there by Arnold and Slack.  A government geologist, Clarence King, examined the area.  He found only a few stray diamonds, in places where they never could exist naturally.  He even found one in a hollow tree stump.  He also noted that the combination of minerals that the mesa supposedly yielded--four different types of diamonds, rubies, amethysts, etc.--was geologically impossible.  It was revealed that in 1871, Arnold and Slack visited Amsterdam and London, where they bought about $35,000 worth of uncut gems.  Some went into the leather pouch, and the rest were given a shallow burial in the mesa.

Ralston’s feelings can be imagined.  Few things are as distressing as thinking you have swindled someone, only to realize that the swindle was really on you.  The financial loss of paying back his investors and the Panic of 1873 combined to bankrupt him.  In 1875, Ralston escaped his troubles by drowning himself in San Francisco Bay.

William Lent, one of the investors in the bogus mine, was angry enough to sue Arnold, but Kentucky refused to extradite.  Lent went to Elizabethtown, Kentucky, where Arnold had settled, to file a civil suit, but his process servers were unable to find Arnold.  (Arnold enjoyed the protection of his townspeople, who took great pride in his ability to con some of the richest men in the land.)  After a good deal of dickering, Arnold finally agreed to pay Lent $150,000, in exchange for future legal immunity.

Arnold was an example of how, despite what we are told, crime can pay very, very well.  He used the rest of his ill-gotten gains to buy 500 acres of prime farmland, a store, and a lavish mansion on 34 acres.  He even became a banker, something that probably did not amuse the unhappy ghost of William Ralston.  In 1878, Arnold got into a business dispute with another banker, Harry Holdsworth.  On August 15, Arnold encountered Holdsworth in a saloon and beat him up.  Holdsworth returned the favor by getting a sawed-off shotgun and shooting his enemy.  The serious injuries Arnold sustained eventually led to his death from pneumonia in February 1879.  (A side note: Arnold’s mansion in Elizabethtown still stands.  It has a reputation for being haunted, but whether the ghosts are Arnold himself or the many people he gulled is unknown.)

As for John Slack, he moved to St. Louis, where he became a coffin maker.  After his company failed, Slack settled in White Oaks, New Mexico, where he continued in the coffin trade, a rich and well-respected man, until his death in 1896.  It is said that he seldom discussed his unorthodox adventures in diamond mining, but when he did, he made a point of how Ralston and his associates tried to cheat him and Arnold.  

“Now tell me,” he would say indignantly, “which group were the thieves?”

The Prince of Poyais

Con artists have forged any number of things as part of their swindles:  paintings, letters, historical documents, etc.  Pretty penny-ante stuff.  You don’t often see grifters with the imagination and think-big spirit to forge an entire country.  But at least one did.

Gregor MacGregor was born in Stirlingshire, Scotland on December 24, 1786.  If not for his subsequent career, the only notable thing one could say about him is that his great-uncle was the legendary Rob Roy.  McGregor joined the British Army when he was only 16, but he resigned in 1810 following a dispute with one of his superiors.  

Soon after his resignation, the Venezuelan revolutionary General Francisco de Miranda came to London.  Thanks to his battles against the Spanish, the English took an “enemy of my enemy is my friend” approach, and received him warmly.  De Miranda’s hero’s welcome inspired MacGregor to restart his military career in Venezuela.  Who knows what adventure he might find in a romantic foreign land?

Upon MacGregor’s arrival in Venezuela in April 1812, de Miranda appointed him to the rank of colonel.  A more personal honor came when he married a cousin of Simon Bolivar, Dona Josefa Antonia Andrea Aristeguita y Lovera.

Despite this auspicious start, MacGregor’s fighting career had mixed success.  He also managed to get on the bad side of Simon Bolivar.  To put it bluntly, Bolivar threatened to hang his new relative-by-marriage if he ever got the chance.  When this vow reached MacGregor’s ears, he wisely concluded that Venezuela was a bit hot for him at the moment, and he relocated to Cape Gracias a Dios, on the Gulf of Honduras.

In April 1820, the leader of the Mosquito Coast, King George Frederic Augustus, granted MacGregor 12,500 square miles of territory in exchange for some rum and jewelry.  King George probably felt he had come out ahead in the deal: the land was ill-suited for farming of any kind, and was not called “Mosquito” for nothing.  To this day, the land, now part of modern Honduras, contains nothing but a small, abandoned old graveyard.  And, of course, mosquitoes.

So far, MacGregor’s life was an undistinguished one.  However, when he returned to London in 1821, he began to show the true Strange Company spirit.  He was now calling himself the “Cazique of Poyais.”  He explained that “Cazique” was equivalent to “Prince,” a title granted to him by Mosquito King George.  Daffy as all this sounded, Londoners accepted his claims without question, and treated him as visiting royalty.  He was even given a formal reception by the Lord Mayor of London.

MacGregor informed Londoners that he was there to attend the coronation of George IV as the official representative of the Poyer people.  He proudly displayed a printed proclamation which he claimed had been issued to the Poyers before he left, which read in part, “I now bid you farewell for a while…I trust that through the kindness of Almighty Providence, I shall be again enabled to return amongst you, and that then it will be my pleasing duty to hail you as affectionate friends, and yours to receive me as your faithful Cazique and Father.”

And MacGregor was just getting warmed up.  He invented a Poyais constitution, commercial and banking systems, and a whole rank of honors.  He opened offices in London, Glasgow, and Edinburgh which sold land certificates for Poyais and arranged transportation for anyone who wanted to relocate there.  He also wrote a 355 page guidebook, “Sketch of the Mosquito Shore, Including the Territory of Poyais,” describing his “kingdom” as a veritable paradise: mild climate, fertile soil, full of fish and game.  Poyais’ capital, “St. Joseph” was depicted as a prosperous, cultured city of 20,000 residents with a theater, opera house, and cathedral.  To Britishers who were having a hard time getting by in their native land, Poyais sounded like an enticing opportunity for better times.

MacGregor, using the revenues of the Government of Poyais as collateral, obtained a loan of 200,000 pounds from a London bank.  He used the Bank of Scotland’s official printer to create Bank of Poyais dollar notes, which he exchanged for pounds sterling or gold.

In 1821, about 250 eager settlers arrived on the Mosquito Coast.  Their reaction when they found out from the natives that no such land as Poyais even existed is better imagined than described.  Instead of the lush Eden promised to them by the “Cazique,” they were stranded in a harsh, disease-ridden dump.  The primitive living conditions caused yellow fever and malaria to decimate the camp.  One man killed himself.  Only about 50 of the settlers made it back to Britain alive.

MacGregor was brazen--or just stupid--enough to try the exact same scam in London a few years later, although, unsurprisingly, this time around he found few takers.  In 1826, a French court tried him and several of his associates for fraud, but remarkably enough, MacGregor was acquitted.  MacGregor continued trying to sell “Poyais” land certificates as late as 1837, but by then it was clear that this particular scheme was well and truly played out.  

After his wife died in 1838, MacGregor returned to Venezuela.  He was made a divisional general of the Venezuelan army, and given a pension.  He died in Caracas in 1845, a respected citizen lauded as a “valiant champion of independence.”  If he felt any twinge of conscience about all the destitution, misery and death he had caused, he showed no sign of it.  

Although one would expect that someone with MacGregor’s history would end his days facing the business end of a gun, he died peacefully in his bed, and was buried with full military honors in Caracas Cathedral, with the president and cabinet ministers attending the funeral.

It’s a funny old world.