The Bergdoll Boys, page 61
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1 Grover’s vacant Broomall farm was finally sold in February 1969 to a real estate development company for $855,000. In 2023, its primary use was for a grocery store shopping center.
2 Pennsylvania Blue Laws restricting sales of alcohol were enforced for hundreds of years, in part because of the pre-Prohibition influence of such large breweries as the Bergdoll Brewery.
3 By 1984, the original Bergdoll mansion was in very poor condition, surrounded by overgrown trees and weeds, and appeared abandoned. In 2023, it was restored with a connecting structure between the house and the carriage house. It was still split into apartments.
4 Alfred, Katharina, and Erwin re-visited their Bergson cousins in the early 1970s and were shown great hospitality with a tour of the grand mansion. During this visit, Louis Bergson, Jr. showed them a 1912 telegram from Orville Wright informing Grover that his Wright B Flyer was ready for delivery.
5 Renamed Laurel Hill West in conjunction with Laurel Hill East across the Schuylkill River and downstream in Philadelphia.
6 The reference to Sr. was possibly done for clarification .
7 While Alfred detailed his father’s last decade, many of Grover’s legal documents produced by his final attorney, David Meade White, Jr, of Richmond, were available for review at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. They explain Grover’s last legal fight, to retain his Broomall farmland or be paid the value he believed it was worth. He lost again. Pennsylvania confiscated 13 acres of the Broomall farm to construct I-476. This time Grover’s attorney got paid when he completed his services.
Appendix I
Grover’s Wright B Flyer
The Franklin Institute of Philadelphia provided documents and photographs that helped construct the fate of Grover’s Wright B flyer. Details on the Ludington family, the Ludington Camden County Airport, and the airline that preceded the renowned Eastern Airlines came from the C. Townsend Ludington papers at the American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming. The New York Times, Washington Star, Washington Times-Herald, and Time magazine articles confirmed many Ludington documents. Additional information is from the Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Record, and Orville Wright’s precisely-worded last will and testament giving the Wright Brothers’ Kitty Hawk airplane to the Smithsonian. Long-time Franklin Institute curator John Alviti gave me copies of everything in the museum’s Bergdoll Wright B file, including beautiful eight-by-ten-inch photographs taken by museum volunteer William Sheahan in the 1930s.
In 1913, Sheahan also took several photographs of Grover flying his airplane at Eagle Field. They are now at the Smithsonian in Washington. The pictures and Sheahan’s unique relationship with Grover probably established his interest in the fate of the old Wright B airplane. A resident of Drexel Hill, not far from the Bergdoll farm, Sheahan would have been aware that the Wright B was rotting in Erwin Bergdoll’s machine shop and being looted by thieves in 1933 when he removed the airplane for restoration.
While reading Sheahan’s Franklin Institute file notes on the acquisition of Grover’s Wright B, I noticed the description would change depending upon where and when it was being made. Multiple statements about the airplane gift were inconsistent. Sheahan or someone else wrote in Franklin Institute records that the airplane had been given to him (Sheahan) in a letter from Grover, then in a wire (telegram) from Grover, then by Grover himself, and then by the Bergdoll family. Sheahan said that he (Sheahan) then gave the airplane to the museum. For decades, this third-party acquisition explanation has been repeated in museum documents and press releases and, therefore, presented as fact in media.
Additionally, in a 1981 book, Aviation and Pennsylvania, published by the Franklin Institute Press, it’s reported that Sheahan, in 1933, informed Ludington of Grover’s airplane in shambles at Erwin’s machine shop, not far from Sheahan’s home. The book says, “after a short exchange of letters, Bergdoll, who was in exile in Germany, made a gift of the historic craft for display at The Institute.” This is the only reference to “letters” as in multiple documents portrayed as gifting the airplane to the Franklin Institute, not to Sheahan “by letter” as is claimed in other documents. Furthermore, Ludington is quoted in the Bulletin newspaper as saying the museum acquired the airplane “through this chap, who is a friend of Bergdoll’s.” Apparently the museum trusted that Sheahan obtained the airplane properly and legally, albeit without a signed transfer document.
It should be noted that no one in the Bergdoll family today believes that Grover gave away his airplane without financial compensation. He was extremely possessive, claimed every cent he believed he was owed, and was tight-fisted with his money, even within his family. Grover limited his life-long companion and bodyguard, Stecher, to twenty-five cents a meal, challenged his butler over modest grocery bills, and went so far as to file for compensation from the U.S. government for the six bullets he fired from his pistol, killing, and wounding the 1923 kidnappers in Germany.
I asked to see the purported airplane gifting letter(s), so I could read it or them, judge Grover’s mood, and inspect what he might have written about his predicament of hiding in Germany in 1933 that caused him to give his airplane to Sheahan, a man he hadn’t seen in nearly 20 years. After several years of searching, none of the three curators who reviewed the Franklin Institute files could find a letter or any other document from Grover or anyone in the Bergdoll family gifting his airplane to Sheahan or the museum. From the Franklin curators, the conclusion was that an airplane gifting letter does not exist. Seven years of searching and gently, and respectfully prodding the museum to explain how it acquired Grover Bergdoll’s airplane finally produced the following statement in April 2023 from Susannah Carroll, Assistant Curator of Collections and Curatorial.
Though there is overwhelming circumstantial evidence of Mr. Bergdoll’s gift of the Wright Model B airplane to The Franklin Institute, at this time, we have not turned up anything signed by Mr. Bergdoll mentioning his gift.
From your own knowledge of Mr. Bergdoll and his background, you should understand why neither he nor The Institute would desire to have anything in writing documenting the oral gift. Bergdoll was still a fugitive and his assets had been and continued to be subject to government seizure.
As you know, his wife, Berta, wrote a letter on November 14, 1943 to Orville Wright referring specifically to the Wright B “which was once his own”. Additionally, at no time between 1935 (when the airplane was put on public exhibit) and Mr. Bergdoll’s death in 1966 did he, his mother, Emma, or his wife, Berta, ever claim any right to the airplane, that a valid gift had not been made, or request its return.
The museum’s statement leads to additional questions. If the airplane was an “oral gift,” then why did the museum for decades describe it as a gift in writing? Since the gift in writing had been repeated by the museum on so many documents and press releases, how could it, in 2023, and for the first time, be described as an oral gift? Which is it? Presented by Grover to Sheahan in a letter or given to Sheahan orally in 1933 while Grover was hiding in Germany, four thousand miles from Sheahan in Philadelphia? Why did such a prestigious museum accept a historic and valuable artifact from a fugitive from justice whose assets were under seizure by the federal government, and do so through a third party (Sheahan) with no legal claim to the airplane whatsoever, and without a written and signed ownership transfer document? Why did no one in the Bergdoll family ever claim the airplane, that a valid gift had not been made, or request its return? Was it because the family had a multitude of other legal and financial issues to address? Was it because Grover Bergdoll was a fugitive, a prisoner, and suffered from insanity? Was it because Grover’s children were led to believe by the museum that the airplane was a gift from their father? And was it because no one ever asked the museum to show proof that a gift was made in writing?
If the airplane gift was made by letter and it was lost, and the letter’s loss could be proved, the benefit of the doubt would go to the museum. However, we should question why such an important document was carelessly handled, unrecorded, misplaced, and lost when many mundane documents have remained intact in the museum’s Wright B file for decades. If a letter never existed, it might explain why there are so many mistakes and contradictions in the airplane acquisition timeline documents, including spelling errors in the names of important Franklin officials such as C. Townsend Ludington and William Sheahan. Neither would have misspelled his own name had they been the ones to have written a contemporary account of the acquisition timeline. Therefore, the Franklin report on how it acquired such an important artifact from a man hiding as a fugitive from justice in Germany may have been postdated by someone other than Sheahan and Ludington.
In 2023, I took my research further and arranged a search through the personal papers of Ludington at the American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, Laramie. While there is a wealth of information in the Ludington papers about his aviation business and connection with the Franklin Institute, there is nothing about such a monumental event as saving the most original Wright B Flyer in American history. Surely, if he was comfortable with the acquisition, Ludington would have recorded his involvement in saving the airplane.
Additionally, and curiously, the only public portrayal of Grover’s Wright B airplane rotting away in Erwin Bergdoll’s machine shop was in a Philadelphia Inquirer article on Sunday morning, October 8, 1933. With two uncredited photographs of the airplane and a race car, and no byline for the article, it appears as if the story was a handout to the newspaper. It incorrectly identifies the building as Grover’s “workshop” and misstates the car as Grover’s “red racer” when it was Erwin’s machine shop and Erwin’s championship Benz racer. Based on the many errors in the article and lack of attribution, byline, and photo credit, I’ve theorized that the article was not written by a reporter who was on the scene, but, rather, by someone in the Inquirer newsroom who was given the photographs for publication, possibly as a preamble to buttress a story about rescuing the airplane. While a rescue was vital and valiant at the time, the question remains, was it done properly?
I’ve consulted with experts on museum curation and antiquities acquisition policies who’ve said that if they were in a similar predicament of having such a historical and valuable artifact in their possession without a written and signed donation letter, they’d be concerned about their right of clear title. They each expressed concern about the ethics of a third-party donation and acceptance of an artifact that may have been entangled in government seizure regulations at the time. One of them told me that a museum’s policy in the absence of a signed gifting document should be to arrange negotiations with the artifact’s original source to secure a formal possession agreement and record it for posterity.
Colgate University Director of Museum Studies Professor Elizabeth Marlowe said that a museum finding itself in this position should emphasize transparency about its acquisition. “Create a display telling the whole story of how they assumed the acquisition was made but now they realize ownership [may be] uncertain.” Professor Marlow said new ethical standards in the museum profession derived from the 1998 Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art include “the responsibility to thoroughly research provenance and share what they find with the person making the claim.”
I believe the Franklin Institute is the best place for the Bergdoll Wright B Flyer and that the Institute has been a responsible caretaker of the airplane for a period approaching 100 years. It is commendable to have saved it from ruination, arranged for funding and restoration three times, and kept it in its true home, Philadelphia. However, the museum’s lack of details about the Bergdoll provenance and the airplane’s significant contribution to aviation history is regrettable for both the public and the Bergdoll family.
If Grover Bergdoll did not bequeath his airplane to the Franklin Institute, who did? And was it a legal transaction? Could the museum legally take possession of an artifact from someone who didn’t own it? Additionally, there is no record of Grover ever challenging the museum’s control of his airplane, even after returning to the United States, serving his sentence in prison, and living at Berta’s farm in Chester County, Pennsylvania. We don’t know if he ever ventured into the museum to see his old airplane, but there is evidence that Berta and Alfred went to see it briefly during a visit to the museum in 1938. Alfred was allowed to sit in his father’s airplane. He mentioned it in just a short line in his diary-manuscript. He said the museum officials told him, at the time, it was one of the museum’s most important artifacts. Alfred said that he and the other members of the Bergdoll family always believed what they were told, that their father gave his airplane to the museum.
The issue is certainly an ethical, if not legal quandary for the Franklin Institute. In these times of prestigious museums and nations worldwide being forced to acknowledge and relinquish Nazi-pilfered artwork and Egyptian antiquities, the Franklin Institute would continue its tradition as an outstanding science repository through a dialogue with the Bergdoll family for a possession and display agreement satisfactory to both parties.
Appendix II
The Bergdoll Beer Recipe
Charles Barth and his wife, Elizabeth Rebstock Barth, in 1902 with their family. Left to right, the children are Karl, Fritz, Elsa, Alvin (on his mother’s lap), and Anna. At this time, Barth was the president and general manager of the Bergdoll Brewery at the height of its production and profits. (Margaret Barth Sutton, Meg Sutton, and Philip Karl Barth)
Sitting at a table just inside the large carriage doors of the 19th-century two-story brick and stone Jack’s Firehouse restaurant in the Fairmount neighborhood of Philadelphia, Louis Erwin Bergdoll and I examine the heavy clear glasses of golden pale lager beer placed in front of us for lunch.
“I wish I could taste what Bergdoll Beer was like,” lamented Louis, named after his father Erwin, his grandfather Louis, and his great-grandfather, Louis (Ludwig) Bergdoll, founder of the Bergdoll Brewery and its crisp lager beer. Taking a foamy sip from his glass of tap lager, Louis asks rhetorically, “Is this what it was like?”
We swirl our glasses and then gulp our lager after a clinking toast to Bergdoll Beer. Since that afternoon in April 2019 at the former firehouse from where crews were sent to fight the great Bergdoll Brewery fire of 1887, I’ve wondered if Louis would ever get the chance to sample his family’s beer. Until just weeks before the publication of this book, I thought it was impossible. But now, with the July 2023 discovery of an old beer recipe from the turn of the 20th century written on a sheet of notebook paper by none other than Emma Barth Bergdoll’s brother, Karl (Charles) Friedrich Barth (1857–1937), the 30-year brewer and general manager of the great Bergdoll Brewery, I realize it’s nearly possible.
The vintage 1900 handwritten recipe for Bergdoll Beer from the company’s long-time brewer and general manager, Charles Barth, Emma Barth Bergdoll’s brother. While it’s impossible to fully replicate Bergdoll Beer with today’s ingredients and production equipment, this recipe is as close as we’ll ever come to producing the taste of the once-popular lager beer across several Mid-Atlantic American states. (Margaret Barth Sutton, Meg Sutton, and Philip Karl Barth)
Cheers to Louis E. Bergdoll. Your chance to sample your family’s beloved lager beer is coming.
In Chapter 1, Philadelphia beer historian Rich Wagner recounts how lager beer in the United States originated in Philadelphia with a Bavarian brewer immigrant, John Wagner (no relation), who smuggled bottom-fermenting yeast into the country after pilfering it from Bavarian monks who had been brewing lager beer since the 1300s. The cleaner-tasting, cold, and less intoxicating lager proved to be much more popular than ale brewed and consumed at room temperature in America before Wagner’s introduction of lagering.
Following the lead of other breweries in Philadelphia in the late 1800s, the Bergdoll Brewery produced lager with Charles Barth working as the brewer, collector, superintendent, secretary, treasurer, and then president and general manager of the brewery. Barth knew a thing or two about brewing lager beer, having started brewing with Bergdoll, then going on to work for Robinson Brewery in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Rothacker, and Poth in Philadelphia, before returning to Bergdoll. Entrusted by Louis Bergdoll and then Emma, Charles Barth ran the brewery during its beer and money-making heyday from 1886 until Prohibition forced it to close in 1920.
Sometime during this period, Charles Barth wrote the recipe portrayed here, and while it’s a standard recipe for a small quantity, we presume that he replicated the Bergdoll Beer lager formula of hops, malt, sugar, yeast, and water. The handwritten recipe was presented during a Barth family gathering in Maine following the January 31, 2023, Florida death of Barth’s granddaughter, Margaret (Nancy) Barth Sutton, 90. Her daughter, Margaret (Meg) Sutton, provided the beer recipe from family genealogy records, and it was photographed and approved for publication by another of Charles Barth’s great-grandchildren, Philip Karl Barth.
On two pages of stationery under the heading, Charles Barth, 260 Sumac Street, Wissahickon, Philadelphia, PA., the beer recipe subtitles are Cooking, Carbonating, and Bottling. Referencing temperature, Barth emphasizes, “This is important.” Upon completion of the beer brewing, he also advises, “It improves with age.”
Charles Barth’s Beer Recipe
Cooking: Boil package of hops in 3½ gallons of water for 1½ hrs.
Add contents of can of malt, 1½ lbs. sugar, stirring thoroughly until dissolved.
Boil ½ hr. Strain into crock thru heavy muslin and squeeze all the juice from the hops.
Add 3 gallons of boiling water.
Carbonating: Allow mixture to cool to room temperature (This is important)
Dissolve 2/3 of a yeast cake in a cup of warm water and add to liquid in crock, stirring thoroughly.
