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In late April of 1906, a one-paragraph news item appeared on an inside page of The New York Times:
Justice Blanchard of the Supreme Court has granted Brodie L. Duke an interlocutory decree of divorce from his wife, Alice Webb Duke, to whom he was married on Dec. 19, 1904. She did not appear at the trial of the case.
The cursory notice signaled the end of a marriage that got sensational front-page headlines in both New York and Chicago fifteen months earlier, when readers learned that Brodie L. Duke, one of the Dukes of tobacco fame, had married an attractive, mysterious woman with a checkered past and a talent for attracting men.
By the early 1900s, family patriarch Washington Duke had turned a modest tobacco company into a force in North Carolina and throughout the South, with the help of Brodie and two other sons, James and Benjamin. Brodie was the oldest, borne by Washington’s first wife, who died a year after Brodie’s birth in 1846. Washington soon remarried and sired Buck and Ben, as the two were commonly called. All three sons worked with their father in the tobacco business after Washington returned from the Civil War. The Duke boys peddled various brands of tobacco, including the famous “Duke of Durham” label.
Brodie initially was the most ambitious, described as a hard-working teetotaler, a reputation that long had vanished by the time he met Alice Webb in 1904. Washington Duke was moderately successful, but younger sons Buck and Ben Duke made the family into one of the most powerful in the South by eventually dominating the exploding American market for cigarettes. At the same time they invested in banking, textile mills, and cotton production.
Brodie, by the early 1880s, had developed a pronounced taste for liquor. While he remained an equal partner in what became known as the American Tobacco Company, his half-brothers ran the company.
Brodie’s first wife died in 1888 after bearing three children, and his second marriage ended in a bitter divorce in 1904. He was prominent in Durham because of his extensive real estate holdings and civic involvement; his boozing benders were also well known. He was institutionalized in Illinois for a drinking problem severe enough that his brothers donated $20,000 to establish a similar alcoholism-treatment center in North Carolina, presumably so Brodie would be closer to such a facility each time he leaped off the wagon. Brodie also displayed what one writer called a “dangerous taste for speculation in the commodity market and especially in cotton futures.” In 1893 his brothers had to bail Brodie out and severely limit his access to the family fortune, which by then was considerable.
The family wealth was often threatened by Brodie’s ability to fritter it away. He invested in land companies in Virginia, North Carolina and Alabama that went belly-up. He sank a quarter-million dollars into building a street railway from Memphis to Raleigh Springs, Tenn., which also flopped. He speculated wildly in cotton futures, invariably with disastrous results. Time and again, his long-suffering brothers or aging father would bail him out, but it wouldn’t be long before Brodie was on another misadventure.
Lastly, I owe a special thanks to Ron Powers for composing an Introduction to this year’s collection of essays and narratives. It is a masterpiece. The eloquence of Ron’s Introduction, in which he speaks of “the redemptive power of truthful language,” ought to be inscribed in stone and read by nonfiction storytellers across the planet. It contains so much wisdom and inspiration that I suspect it will sustain our narrative craft for at least another century or so.
The aging, alcoholic Brodie was the perfect mark for Alice L. Webb. She had come to New York City in a last-ditch attempt to raise the money needed to complete the option on a tobacco field in Nacogdoches, Texas—and to stave off the creditors hounding her and Charles Taylor, her business partner in the fancily named Texas-Cuba Tobacco Company. Webb and Taylor, both operating out of Chicago, proposed to import two hundred families from Holland to work on a red-dirt farm in Deep East Texas, growing tobacco that would rival Havana’s finest. They had taken an option on a seven hundred thirty-four acre farm, creating great ballyhoo in a small town starved for any economic boost. The editor of the town’s only daily newspaper quickly dubbed Alice “The Tobacco Queen of Texas.”
Boosters in American towns of all sizes have always been eager to latch on to a scheme that would raise their community’s fortunes—whether it’s a new industry, a novel agricultural product, land promotion, a new college, or a tourist attraction. This constant craving for more is part and parcel of the American dream—more business, more people, cash registers ringing ever more quickly.
In the early part of the twentieth century, the small Deep East Texas town of Nacogdoches, whose slogan long had been the “Oldest Town in Texas,” was no exception to this addiction to progress—however it is defined. Town leaders courted oilmen, railroad magnates, timber barons, excursionists (as prospective land speculators were called), and agricultural specialists willing to try a new crop in a red-clay soil that was primarily suitable for growing pine trees. Surely, that pot of gold was just a scheme away. Back then, “scheme” didn’t have the pejorative sense it does now and was often used to describe the latest roadmap to wealth being bandied about.
So it’s not surprising that, in early 1904, the town’s boosters, including Bill Haltom, the grumpy editor of the Daily Sentinel—the town’s only daily newspaper—practically fell all over themselves in lavish praise of a pair of promoters who rolled into town from Chicago.
The idea was not that far fetched—a characteristic of all good con games. The railroad industry was then the principal corporate impetus behind economic development in rural areas. The Southern Pacific had teamed with the United States Department of Agriculture, which determined in 1903 that the soil of Deep East Texas was capable of producing a high-quality cigar leaf tobacco that could compare—and compete—with leaf imported from Havana.
The USDA that year established a federal Government Tobacco Experimental Station in Nacogdoches, which already was home to two modest cigar factories. H.S. Edler, who came to town a few years earlier—“preaching the doctrine of tobacco from the start,” as Haltom put it—operated one of the factories. The editor credited Edler with having piqued the government’s interest with the fine taste of his “Blue Ribbon” cigars. Thousands of stogies were produced weekly in his small factory, which employed three cigar makers.
The government station owned eight acres of tobacco under cultivation, while Edler and a partner held two acres on which they were trying to produce a wrapper that could compete with the beloved Cuban version. Haltom claimed that there was some “lively bidding” going on for land located near the experimental station—the reasoning being that if the government thought it was good tobacco land, than it must be true.
A similar move was under way near San Augustine—the county east of Nacogdoches—led by W.H. Prince, who also once worked for the experimental station. Haltom warned that the boosters of that town, an old rival to Nacogdoches, “are awake to the scheme and putting up liberally to carry it out. They know a good thing and they have the favorite red lands there that will beat Cuba growing Cuban tobacco. Now, we don’t want to be left in such a scheme.”
Colonel S.F.B. Morse, who was manager of the Atlantic passenger system for Southern Pacific Railroad, became enamored of tobacco’s potential and saw a new source of revenue for the railroad, through shipping tobacco from East Texas to Houston for manufacturing into cigars. The railroad’s backing brought in a number of speculators. By February 1904, a new tobacco-packing house had been formed under the direction of L.H. Shelfer, who also had been with the experimental station. The Florida, Havana and Sumatra Co. announced it was willing to enter into contracts with farmers across East Texas and would pay a guaranteed price of fifteen cents a pound for cured tobacco. Seed would be provided for free, but farmers were required to cure the tobacco themselves.
Tobacco proved to be a moderately successful crop for East Texas. Cigar-filler tobacco grown in East Texas from Cuban seed won a gold medal at the 1904 St. Louis Exposition and for two years in a row at the Texas State Fair.
Plans soon were under way for a local cigar factory, in addition to the tobacco-packing house started a year earlier. The Nacogdoches Cigar Company’s backers promised the “best five and ten cent smokers ever placed on the market.”
“Tobaccodoches,” as Haltom wittily dubbed his county, received national attention in early 1905 for its attempt to become the next Havana, but the publicity wasn’t exactly positive. A pair of get-rich-quick artists had arrived, hoping to cash in on the tobacco craze, or at least fleece a few local investors before hitting the road. Before it was over, the saga was being played out in the front pages of the Times and The Chicago Tribune, with a cast of colorful characters that provided newspaper fodder for several months.
Charles S. Taylor and Alice Webb operated a Chicago firm called Taylor, Webb & Co. The pair were seasoned promoters whose stories shifted as circumstances warranted. At the height of the East Texas tobacco frenzy, Taylor and Webb presented themselves to the town’s shakers and movers as the key to the city’s future financial success.
The couple had big plans. The Texas-Cuba Tobacco Company would “experiment on the growth of fine cigar wrappers under canvas shade” at Redfield, a hamlet six miles northeast of Nacogdoches on the Houston East and West Texas railroad line. The HE&WT narrow-gauge line, established in the 1880s, was more popularly known as Hell Either Way Taken for its constant breakdowns and rough ride.
The Texas-Cuba Tobacco Company incorporated in Texas in March 1904, supposedly with a capital stock of $150,000. Besides Taylor, the principals listed in the charter were L.H. Shelfer, formerly with the experimental tobacco station, and J.G. Smith.
The Texas-Cuba Tobacco Company managed to quickly garner favorable publicity, both in Nacogdoches and beyond. The Houston Chronicle reported favorably on a conference held in the office of T.J. Anderson, the general passenger agent for Southern Pacific and the latest pursuer of Col. Morse’s dream of Cuban-quality tobacco grown throughout East Texas and later manufactured into cigars in Houston. Taylor, Shelfer and Webb announced they had purchased a seven hundred thirty-four-acre plantation in Redfield from Col. Morse, who had since left the railroad. Shelfer, who seems to have been unwittingly lured in by the two promoters, was named plantation manager. Alice Webb, variously described in ensuing reports as being thirty-four, thirty-eight, or “nearing forty” years of age, was gushingly described as the “Tobacco Queen of Texas,” the other newspapers picking up on Haltom’s nickname for her. She certainly seems to have had a mesmerizing effect on a number of men, as later events would show.
Certainly Bill Haltom was entranced. After Webb addressed the Nacogdoches Business League, the editor wrote, “The lady is thoroughly conversant with every detail of business and is interested in large schemes for colonization and promoting plans for developing the resources of a place where requisite capital is lacking.” Nacogdoches had been late to get a railroad line. Its boosters were constantly casting about for the next big thing that would improve the town’s fortunes, but the town definitely lacked capital.
Webb told the league about her Dutch-immigrant plan. She asked for no money right away, promising that when the time came she and her partners would look for appropriate investors. The league was so entranced with her spiel that the Nacogdoches Business League made Webb an honorary member.
Taylor and Webb managed to talk Commercial Bank of Nacogdoches into loaning them $3,000, putting up the seven hundred thirty-four acres as collateral. The pair also persuaded other investors to put up cash and induced a builder to construct three tenant houses and two barns on the property, at a cost of $1,500.
A minor detail was overlooked. Taylor and Webb had never actually purchased the property but had only taken an option on it. The couple slipped out of town by late summer, when it became apparent to them their ploy was unraveling. A Nacogdoches County grand jury indicted them for theft in October, but the indictment was kept secret until mid-January of 1905, in hopes Webb and Taylor would return to town and save the county the expense of extraditing them.
Alice claimed she met Brodie Duke in autumn of 1904 at the Park Avenue Hotel, where Brodie often stayed when in the city. He soon was persuaded by Webb to help raise the money for her Nacogdoches land deal by putting up a $2,000 escrow check to hold the land, while he tried to raise the $18,000 needed to complete the deal. So estranged was Brodie from the fabulous wealth enjoyed by his half-brothers that he had to return to North Carolina to snare some securities in order to secure a bank note for the $18,000. It appears Alice Webb had found a sugar daddy, perhaps in time to save the farm and avoid the still-secret indictment.
Webb and Brodie made the front page of the New York Times when, on December 19, 1904, the two were joined in marriage by the Reverend W.E. Coe, assistant pastor of what, in press accounts, is simply called Dr. Parkhurst’s church. The marriage license listed Brodie’s age as fifty eight; Webb claimed to be thirty-seven but left blank her place of birth and current residence.
Brodie’s family did not take the news of his marriage well.
Within days, Ben Duke—who along with one of Brodie’s grown sons had tried to talk his half-brother out of marrying Alice—began marshaling the resources of the family to annul the marriage and, in their view, to protect Brodie from himself. After the wedding, Brodie, Alice, and a female friend of the bride’s with the extravagant name of Agnes Des Plaines again ensconced themselves at the Park Avenue Hotel. Alice appears to have quickly set about spending Brodie’s money. She cashed a $4,000 check from him, which was added to the $15,000 in notes that Brodie signed just before the couple was married.
Ben Duke quickly filed a suit claiming his half-brother was insane. On January 6—just eighteen days after his marriage to Alice—Brodie was forcibly removed from the Park Avenue Hotel by two detectives and taken to Bellevue Hospital. Two “alienists,” as psychiatrists were called a century ago, examined Brodie there. The new Mrs. Duke attempted to stop the detectives from taking Brodie away, to no avail. After Brodie arrived at Bellevue, authorities locked away for safekeeping $40,000 worth of cash, bonds and securities that were stuffed in his pockets when he was seized.
The bride fought back through an attorney and temporarily went into hiding. She offered “determined resistance” to the detectives, and, when that failed, called the hospital in a vain attempt to find out where Brodie had been taken.
Alice maintained that Brodie pursued her, not the other way around, and that she certainly didn’t marry him for his family fortune:
I never married Mr. Duke for his money. If our different fortunes are carefully examined, it will probably be found that I have more money at my command than Mr. Duke. I married him for love. From the first time I met him I cared for him, but did not let him see it, and was as much astonished as a woman could be when he proposed to me … Our marriage, however, has been a happy one. He was almost wild with anxiety until I went with him to Dr. Parkhurst’s church and was married to him. From that time on he was ridiculously happy. He told me repeatedly that all he wished was to make me as happy as he was…
Alice Webb Duke’s claim that she had more money at her command than Brodie proved to be ludicrous—even with the latter’s cash-flow woes. And, while the Dukes’ twenty-one day-old marriage may have been blissful, it was fueled by a steady diet of alcohol and drugs—beginning on the wedding night.
Carodan Thompson was a business associate of Brodie’s and at one point participated in one of Brodie’s failed get-rich schemes—the Greater New York Crude Oil Burner. In the Times, Thompson said Brodie:
…Hunted him up at his home and told him to put on evening clothes and come out and see him spliced. He (Thompson) says Duke could find a drink quicker than a minister, but Duke told him his fiancée was waiting in a carriage, and urged him to hurry up. They first drove to Grace Church, but an assistant of the Rev. Dr. Huntington refused to marry them on the ground that both had been divorced. They had several drinks and then drove to Dr. Parkhurst’s church, where they found the Reverend Dr. Coe, who performed the ceremony.
The Times continued to play the Duke drama on its front page. Mrs. Desplaines (spelled differently in the second Times article) was interviewed by a reporter, as she waited to talk to the New York district attorney, who was exploring whether charges should be filed against Alice Webb Duke. Mrs. Desplaines claimed Duke was smitten with a “case of love at first sight. The second time he called he wanted to marry her.”
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