The Bergdoll Boys, page 3
Stecher stood his distance on the polished Carrara marble floor and allowed Bergdoll to approach the counting tables. From his position Stecher wondered about the ruddy-complected and tobacco teeth-stained man dressed as a banker approaching a counting table. Would the teller recognize him? Bergdoll’s photograph appeared on every newspaper’s front page from the District of Columbia to California, especially in Washington, a city with multiple newspapers. Because of the press reports, an alert teller would suspect a man lacking bankers’ credentials requesting vast quantities of gold coins. Bergdoll was sure to be recognized and revealed, Stecher believed, appearing somewhat suspect, holding onto a farmer’s milk can inside the U.S. Treasury cash room.
Moreover, the Treasury had all but stopped handing out gold coins. Since the Federal Reserve Bank’s establishment seven years earlier, they no longer handed out bullion, gradually moving to a greenback dollar system. No one had ever waltzed into the cash room to fill a milk can with gold until Philadelphia’s notorious Grover Bergdoll. But, in 1920, the Treasury still needed to fully migrate from gold to cash. And Bergdoll knew the Treasury must honor the promise on each gold certificate issued. After all, they were demand notes, and he knew the tellers would have no choice but to fulfill his demand for gold coins. Opening his coat and removing the canvas bag, Bergdoll extended his arm across the counter and handed the teller the first thick wad of neatly wrapped green and gold embossed certificates.
The teller could have been more alert to his customer’s appearance, but, turning over his hands and looking into the notes, he was startled at the amount. It was too much! Even though the Treasury hauled in thousands of pounds of gold coins, bullion, and cash daily, it did not routinely hand over this much gold to a stranger walking in from the street with certificates, no matter how businesslike and gentlemanly he appeared.
“Why do you want all this gold?” the teller demanded.
“That’s my business,” Bergdoll shot back.
“There’s a rule that we never change more than $2,000 at one time,” the teller countered.
Bergdoll calmly pointed to the message on the notes declaring that each would be redeemed in gold at the U.S. Treasury upon presentation.
“How do you plan to carry away $40,000 in gold?” the teller asked in the first sign of defeat.5
Bergdoll turned and motioned toward Stecher, holding the shiny milk can.
The teller excused himself to consult his boss, the head clerk, in a room behind the counting table aisle. When he returned, he said, “It’s against the rules, but I’ll do it this time.”6
For whatever reason, in the heart of Washington following the Great War and days after the escape of an infamous draft dodger, the teller did not realize the significance of a $40,000 withdrawal of gold coins from the Treasury. Nor did he recognize convicted federal prison escapee and fugitive Grover Cleveland Bergdoll, America’s most notorious celebrity millionaire draft dodger. Instead, he quietly began counting Bergdoll’s notes and ordering gold on a cart into the cash room from the Treasury’s massive fire-proof steel, iron, and masonry vaults. Incredibly, Bergdoll and Stecher’s bold plan was working. The two lifelong friends and their milk can full of gold would be back on the run in their speedy Hudson in minutes.
The Treasury honored its obligation printed on the face of Bergdoll’s many gold certificates. When the counting was complete, the fugitive got his gold. It rattled and clanged as the ties on bags of coins were loosened into the mouth of the milk can. The Treasury kept its heavy gray canvas bags. Curious clerks turned toward the unexpected clattering noise to witness the spectacle. When filled, Bergdoll and Stecher carried the milk can on the wheeled cart out of the cash room, down the hydraulic elevator, out onto the 15th Street sidewalk, and together grasping a looped steel handle, hoisted the can into the back seat floor of the parked Hudson. The car’s leaf springs sank.
“The can was so heavy we were afraid the floorboards would give,” Bergdoll said. “Because of this, we had to drive slowly through the principal streets of Washington, past the Department of Justice again, the headquarters of the hunt for me.” Then, Stecher began motoring the Hudson out of Washington, heading north into Maryland bound for Pennsylvania and the Lincoln Highway. They drew a line on a folding filling station paper map westward for the Minnesota boundary with Canada.
Notwithstanding the elaborate mission Bergdoll and Stecher bragged about pulling off that morning in May 1920 to obtain the gold, it was too incredible for most rational people to comprehend and believe, except for those anxious with greed and the gullible American public awash with sensational Bergdoll press. And they swallowed it. The sparkling coins jingling in the shiny milk can and weighing down the stylish automobile would instigate one of American military history’s most incredible legal cases. The infamous Bergdoll gold would be pursued for decades by federal officials up to the White House, but it would never be seen again by anyone other than Grover Cleveland Bergdoll.
Stecher pressed his foot on the gas pedal at the wheel beside him.
Their long incredible journey was beginning.7
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1 The Super Six designation for several Hudson models indicates a straight six-cylinder engine.
2 Many years after its name was first used in 1901, the president’s home was referred to as the White House and the Executive Mansion. The State, War, and Navy building became the Old Executive Office Building.
3 Before World War I, German-born Eugene Stecher spelled his name with a K. He was alternately called Gene and Ike. However, his most used nickname was Stecker.
4 Federal Reserve notes represented legal tender currency, typically enabling the bearer to exchange notes for gold coins, bullion, or certificates.
5 The value of the cash tendered for gold was about $525,000 in 2023. However, new federal banking regulations should have barred the conversion of notes to gold coins.
6 Bergdoll’s verbatim exchange with the teller was provided to Leighton H. Blood, a journalist hired by the American Legion to track down Bergdoll in Germany and write an article for Hearst’s International magazine in April 1924. It was also gleaned from the teller’s sworn testimony to a Congressional investigating committee. Treasury records, Blood, Stecher, and the teller confirmed that Bergdoll withdrew $40,000 in gold coins, but Bergdoll greatly embellished the story for the magazine, making up most of the details.
7 This is a narrative nonfiction book, meaning everything in it is accurate or based on events presented as factual when they were happening. But sometimes, people lie. Therefore, I should explain that this prologue is a story by Grover Cleveland Bergdoll, who had a penchant for lying. While he traveled to the United States Treasury in Washington to withdraw gold coins, separately from Emma and Judge Romig’s trips, the events surrounding were highly embellished by Grover and recited to magazine journalist Leighton Blood to support Grover’s fictional story about needing to get out of jail to hunt for buried gold in the Maryland mountains. This is the only fiction chapter because Grover made up most of the story and stuck with it for decades. The portion made up by Grover pertains to doubling back to Washington in the Hudson Super Six and filling a milk can with gold. Otherwise, Grover’s story is accurate about driving to the upper Midwest and across the border into Canada. It’s an example of how Grover lied and spun his dramatic life to fit his needs, disregarding anyone in his path. The Hearst Corporation provided a full copy of the 1924 Hearst’s International magazine. The description of Washington in 1920 came from a private photograph album purchased in an antique store in Pennsylvania with multiple 1920-era photographs of key Washington government buildings, including the Treasury, the White House, the Capitol, and the Army and Navy Building.
CHAPTER ONE
Bergdoll Beer
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1871–1890
On Saturday morning, November 18, 1871, workers at the massive Bergdoll and Psotta Brewery in Philadelphia were busy lining hogsheads with rosin, using generous squirts of steam to expand the wooden staves of the barrels to prevent leaking when filled with the brewery’s crisp lager beer. Entering the brew house with his father, Louis, as they usually did on a Saturday morning, ten-year-old George Bergdoll was standing too closely when intense pressure blew out the head from a beer barrel, and it flew into George’s skull, killing him on the spot. The Philadelphia coroner ruled it an accidental instant death. It was a tremendous blow to the Bergdoll family and it upset the chain of succession that had been as carefully planned as the Deutscher Kaisers of the Bergdoll’s homeland in Baden, Germany.
In fact, Louis Ludwig Bergdoll and his wife, Elizabeth, had planned for George to join his brothers, Charles and (another) Louis, when all three would take over the brewery one day. With a strong stable of sons, Bergdoll beer would be assured well into the future, they believed. With young George’s death, beer production continued, but the family and the brewery complex were cast into a long mourning period. Then, just over a decade after the death of George, Charles Bergdoll died from an unknown cause at 29 on October 7, 1883. And days later, on October 22, the Bergdoll’s daughter Elizabeth “Lizzie” Bergdoll Schoening died following childbirth at 30. By then, Louis and Elizabeth were sole owners of the renamed and rapidly growing Bergdoll Brewery. They focused on their only surviving son, Louis, whose singular role in continuing the Bergdoll beer tradition rested solely upon the untimely fate of his brothers. And, soon enough, Louis’ untimely fate would also determine the future of the brewery and the Bergdoll family.
***
“Gib-me a Bergdoll” was a common phrase among the working-class men in Philadelphia saloons in the early 20th century. Factory and mill workers would walk or ride a trolley to their jobs and dip into the saloons before and after work, many of which were owned by the city’s brewers and part of their daily lives. Workers had numerous beer options, depending upon the saloon in their neighborhood. Still, they often chose inexpensive Bergdoll Beer, one of the most popular brands in the city before the Great War.
The Bergdoll Brewery in Philadelphia in the late 1870s, before the devastating fire at the malt house, bottom left. Oak barrels can be seen at the bottom, near the long two-story office building, later topped with a decorative Victorian third floor. The brew house’s inlaid Bergdoll & Psotta 1875 sign is at the bottom right. The 1830s Greek Revival Founder’s Hall of Girard College is at the top background. (Library Company of Philadelphia)
Even when drunk, the beer’s name, Bergdoll, rolls off the tongue, and refill demands could easily be heard in a loud, crowded saloon. A barkeeper could even recognize the brand being ordered by reading lips. The beer was trusted for taste and price in several Mid-Atlantic states.
Everyone knew that Louis Bergdoll made a good beer. The smooth and cold yellow lagers (dark for the holidays) quickly satisfied the thirst of Philadelphia’s working men and women.
The year 1887 was a prosperous one for the Bergdoll Brewery, approaching its fourth decade producing beer for a vast region surrounding its Philadelphia home. Profits exceeded $300,000, split between five shareholders, all members of the Bergdoll family.
The brewery’s daily operations were overseen by the founder’s youngest son, Louis Bergdoll, the accidental heir to the beer operations because of the untimely deaths of his older brothers. Young Louis’ father, also Louis, with his thick German accent and deteriorating health, spent much of his time at his country estate southwest of Philadelphia in a region named Upland by the first European settlers who navigated up the mouth of the Delaware River.
The Bergdoll Brewery in 1887, after redesign but before the fire in the malt house, left. Otto Wolf’s 1880s architecture changed the buildings dramatically. The office building, center, includes the Victorian third floor, and Parrish Street, center, takes on a more urban appearance. Large oak beer barrels lay in a storage yard across North 29th Street from the office building. (Hagley Museum)
The wooded and rich farmlands had been part of the vast acreage granted to William Penn by King Charles II of England to pay debts England owed to Penn’s father. Louis Bergdoll’s farmhands milked a few cows for milk, butter, and cheese, and they also grew hops on the property, befitting a wealthy Philadelphia brewer. From his farm, Louis the elder could monitor daily reports from the brewery, tracking production and inventory, prices, and shipments of barrels and boxed bottles of Bergdoll Beer to saloons the brewery owned or controlled in Eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware.
Despite personal and business setbacks, the Bergdoll Brewery was on track to celebrate its 40th anniversary in 1889 as one of the “best in the country,” according to a business profile in the Philadelphia Inquirer. “Manufacturing beer exclusively, [it is] made from the best Canada malt and finest Bohemian hops. The Bergdoll Beer possesses superior strength, flavor, aroma, and color.” Like Pabst beer in Milwaukee and Carling Black and White lager in London, Canada, Bergdoll Beer was for the Philadelphia-area men who toiled with their hands.
***
The American Bergdoll family patriarch, Ludwig (Louis) Bergdoll, was born on July 25, 1825, in the small town of Sinsheim, Baden, in the German Confederation of states and kingdoms.1 Ludwig’s parents, Johann Georg and Katharina Schneider Bergdoll, produced seven children in their two-story stone house with a vaulted cellar along Sinsheim’s main commercial street across from the town hall.2
Johann Georg was a foundry master and blacksmith and a respected citizen of Sinsheim. However, just before Ludwig’s ninth birthday, Johann Georg died on May 5, 1834, leaving Katharina pregnant to care for the family. As was customary, the Sinsheim council appointed citizens as an assistant to Katharina and the children’s supervisors. To help Katharina with her finances, the stadt fathers ordered her late husband’s debtors to pay their bills. When some didn’t, the board seized possessions and assets until the debts were satisfied.
Nearly 10 at the time, Ludwig was mature enough to understand his family’s severe difficulties. It would leave a long-lasting impact on his life and cause him to strive for economic security.
Katharina Bergdoll’s financial stress didn’t last long, however. She remarried in 1836 to a widowed wagonmaker, Heinrich Stein, who brought his children into the family before the new couple produced more children.
Death struck the family again on September 25, 1843, when Stein died, leaving Katharina to care for seven children at home. Ludwig was 18 and already under apprentice to Jacob Schneider, a Steinsfurt brewer. Stein had paid the three-year apprenticeship contract of 60 gulden in 1842 through the Cooper and Brewer’s Guild. Still, Ludwig was released early for outstanding work and ethical behavior and was awarded his apprenticeship certificate within two years.
Such a rapid procession through learning the trade was standard and contributed to economic strife in the German states of the 1840s. Workers advancing too quickly caused more labor supply than demand. Not enough jobs were available, even among the masters of their trades—the system pushed Ludwig out.
In 1844, Ludwig attended a business school, Gewerbeschule, at Sinsheim, where he trained in arithmetic, economics, earth science, and technical drawing. Ludwig appeared to become an artisan among other merchants of the German Confederation formed after Napoleon’s defeat. Feeling restless, Ludwig also applied for travel to seek his vocation as a journeyman brewer. But he ran into trouble.
Under the laws of the military affairs of the German Empire in 1845, men capable of bearing arms were required to serve military duty for seven years, the first three as an active soldier, the remaining four as a reserve.
In 1845, Ludwig was called up to join the military or feared his time was approaching. A Bergdoll family story of successive generations suggests that Ludwig paid a close friend 300 Gulden to serve his military duty despite military affairs law stating that “no substitute [could] be accepted.” This indiscretion caught the attention of the authorities, and more trouble followed. Ludwig and his brother, Georg, an artisan baker, were cited for slander and other minor street offenses, including scandal and staying in beer halls after curfew, for which they were ordered to pay fines.
During this time, farmers and artisans of the Confederation were openly rebelling against the poor economic conditions. Oral history passed down through the Bergdoll family suggests that Ludwig participated in these often violent rebellions, leading to his ultimate decision to emigrate to America to seek a better life.
Or, more likely, to flee imminent arrest and conscription. In simple terms, Ludwig Bergdoll may have run from the military draft.
According to a diary written in the 1960s by Ludwig Bergdoll’s great-grandson, Alfred Bergdoll, Ludwig learned that he would be arrested in his room at the Crocodile Inn of Sinsheim for his political activities and possibly for failing to report for military duty.3 But, when a policeman arrived to apprehend him, Ludwig bit the officer’s finger and fled with his sister, Christine Luise, to the United States.4
Alfred Bergdoll’s diary lists Johann Friedrich Steinman as Ludwig’s close friend and the man paid to serve as Ludwig’s substitute in the German military. Steinman’s granddaughter, Alma Metzger, told a researcher for Alfred, “[Ludwig] came back later to visit in Sinsheim after he had acquired a considerable fortune, and gave gifts to my grandfather [Steinman] in a very generous amount.”
