Leadora Bennett Gets into Trouble

By 1850, Minnesota had just become a territory, and as Charles E. Flandrau walked down the gangplank off of the riverboat that took him from New York City, he entered a new world, the frontier. In New York, he had been practicing law in the firm of his father, Thomas Hunt Flandrau (he was a law partner with Aaron Burr…the Aaron Burr who won the duel with Alexander Hamilton in 1804).

But now he was on his own, and Minnesota is not New York City; business for attorneys in the fledgling territory wasn’t exactly ripe for the picking. In fact, Flandrau’s friend who had traveled with him in similar prospects of making a fortune, Horace Bigelow, packed up his shingle and turned instead to teaching.

Twenty-five-year-old Flandrau himself gave up his sparsely-patroned law practice for a while and explored his new environment, eventually settling in a small backwater area that had just been recently opened to white settlement, Traverse des Sioux, a place that one could not only cross the Minnesota River but it was also considered a jumping off point to cross the entire Great Basin.

In 1843, Native Americans were entrenched in the mission system, where a small town flourished around it. The year 1851 saw the signing of the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux, in which the Sioux sold 24 million acres of land in Minnesota for seven cents an acre and were confined to various reservations. So many new settlers were flowing into the territory from New England that Minnesota was soon being called the “New England of the West.”

Once Flandrau returned to law the following year, his path soon led him to his desired fame and fortune in the Minnesota law circles, as he became one of the first judges elected to the Minnesota Supreme Court.

According to Minnesota Lawyers and Judges Who Made History by Cheryl Heilman, “Justice Flandrau [left] served on the Court with Isaac Atwater, who came to Minnesota from New York in 1850, and Chief Justice Lafayette Emmet, who was born in Ohio and came to Minnesota in 1851. The Court heard arguments in a room in the north capitol building; the justices often conferred together in one of their homes, as there was no official room for judicial conferences.”

In one of these makeshift courtrooms in the north capitol building, in December 1859, then 20-year-old Leadora Bennet Whitcomb, who had been married to George Whitcomb for only two months, took to the witness stand to plead her side of the case known in Minnesota legal circles as Bennett v. Gillette.

There are not many facts known about Leadora Bennett (right) before she married Whitcomb or followed him out west 20 years later, as most records of her early deeds have been lost. However, Leadora was born on January 16, 1839, into a riverboat family. That much is clear. When she was young, she attended the Young Ladies Seminary in Wheeling, Virginia (the city is now in West Virginia, as the western counties ceded from Virginia during the Civil War). Leadora’s father, Abraham Bennett, (1803-1863) was a well-known steamboat captain on the Mississippi and a landowner, plying his trade on regular runs from Wheeling to New Orleans, as it is said that he piloted one of the first ships to use a steam whistle and carry a new invention called a life preserver. An 1838 edition of the St. Louis Bulletin describes an early version of the invention at the Chelsea Water Works in 1820: “It was an iron whistle, which, piercing the top of the boiler, descended into it, near to which the water could with safety be evaporated. The moment the water became exhausted below that level the steam would rush up into the whistle and ‘pipe all hands,’ giving the warning of danger.”

Little Rock, Arkansas, riverboat captain William H. Fulton wrote to the Marine Journal in 1885 with the story of the first whistle: “In the spring of 1844, Capt. Abraham Bennett, of Wheeling, West Virginia, J. Stut Neal, of Indiana, and myself had a boat built at Pittsburgh, which was named Revenue. While the boat was being finished Mr. Andrew Fulton, the great bell and brass foundry man, made a trip to Philadelphia on business. On his return he spoke of a great curiosity he had seen there in the way of a steam whistle, which could be screwed on the top of one of the boilers. Mr. Fulton described the whistle in such a manner that Mr. Neal, who was an engineer and one of the owners, ordered one to be put on the Revenue. I was to be clerk of the boat and induced the Captain to put into the staterooms rubber life preservers. I now state without fear of contradiction that the steamer Revenue was the first steamboat on Western waters to use a steam whistle or a life preserver."

Leadora’s mother, Elizabeth Barney, was Abraham’s second wife (it is unknown what happened to the first), and Leadora is the oldest of four other siblings (and three from the first wife): Miriam (“Minnie”), Abram, Edwin and Elizabeth (“Lizzie”). Like her brothers and sisters, they were all born in Wheeling, in Ohio County, Virginia, Leadora on January 16, 1839.

Times for riverboat captains were changing in the 1850s and 1860s. The railroad industry was taking off, which mean more tracks and more destinations, but most importantly, it meant that you could ship something somewhere and a river wasn’t needed to get it there. From John R. Borchert’s 1987 book, America’s Northern Heartland: An Economic and Historical Geography of the Upper Midwest, “Dramatic changes in water and road transportation accompanied the explosion of railroad building. River packet traffic declined catastrophically. Slow boats on a few tortuous streams could not compete with the trains for passengers, express, mail, or general cargo. The upper Mississippi waterway had become obsolete except for the movement of logs and lumber. The upper Missouri was also going out of use. But it was being abandoned in discontinuous segments.”

Perhaps business wasn’t what Abraham Bennett wanted it to be or maybe he felt his age was catching up to him, but in the early 1850s, soon after Minnesota became a territory and after all of his sons and daughters were born, Abraham Bennett took his family to a small farming community between Minneapolis and St. Paul and began life anew as a farmer. According to the History of Ramsey County and the City of St. Paul, Abraham Bennett was appointed by the governor to the position of Ramsey County Commissioner, a responsibility he held from 1855 to 1858.

The location of the Bennett farm was in the town of Roseville, now a suburb just north of the midway point between Minneapolis and St. Paul. Interestingly, in the middle of Roseville is a lake named Bennet Lake (spelled in some sources with only one T), but the same source named above credits the lake to one E. Bennett, an early settler. On May 11, 1858, Roseville was organized into a town, where 22 men were elected into various positions; Abraham Bennett was elected as "overseer of the poor."

Incidentally, rather ironically perhaps, especially considering how the railroads led to the eventual death of the riverboat packet business along the Mississippi and other great rivers of the Mid-West (Missouri, Ohio), Abraham was killed in 1863 when he was hit by a train. Elizabeth soon followed, passing away in 1867; both of her parents are buried in the Oakland Cemetery in St Paul (Lot 62, Block 2).

Years earlier, when the subject of this story takes place, it is on Saturday August 13, 1853, in St. Paul, Minnesota, that Leadora was visiting a friend’s house, as she was regularly accustomed to do. Since her house was some distance from St. Paul, Abraham Bennett, when the time was appropriate, sent one of his sons (it is unclear which one, either Abram or Edwin) with a team of horses and the carriage to bring her home.

Having no information as where the Bennett house actually was or which friend Leadora was visiting, it is difficult to know how long it took the Bennett boy to get to Leadora’s friend’s house, but when he did, he didn’t stay for long. Hitching up the two horses to the fence outside the house, he told Leadora that he wanted to go into town for an unknown reason.

The 1886 book by John Proffatt The American Decisions explains: “On his arrival he drove up to the house where his sister was, and fastened both horses to the fence near the house. He then saw his sister and informed her that he brought the team in to carry her home; he then went down town, leaving the horses where he had fastened them.”

We know from several sources that George Dexter Whitcomb (left) entered Leadora’s life soon after he arrived in the St. Paul area in October 1856, after purchasing land in Section 12 of the Belle Creek area (about 350 miles southeast of St. Paul). Three years later, they were married on October 19, 1859, and Leadora gave birth to their first son, George Bennett Whitcomb, exactly one year and one day later.

As an aside: This is where some controversy comes into play. Most historians say that Henry Whitcomb, born October March 8, 1863, and died June 2, 1864 was the oldest Whitcomb. From most every non-sourced online biography of the Whitcomb family says the same thing, something along these lines: "By 1865, Whitcomb had been promoted to General Purchasing Agent for the Panhandle Railroad and the family included George Bennett Whitcomb and Carroll Sylvanus Whitcomb." This is a fine claim, but seems unlikely, especially considering that Henry was born in March 1863, and it says two more boys were added by 1865, specifically by July 1, 1865, when Carroll Sylvanus was born. Although it is physically possible to given birth twice in 27 months and perhaps a common occurance in those times, but if you look closely at the births of the Whitcomb children, with the acception Virginia, all of the children were born approximately two to three years apart: George, 1860; Henry, 1863; Carroll, 1865; William, 1868; Leadora, 1871; Elizabeth, 1871; and Virginia, 1877.

In addition, the Panhandle Railroad wasn't officially started until 1868, so George Whitcomb couldn't have been an employee of it in 1865: "An act incorporating the Panhandle Railroad Company was passed by the West Virginia Legislature on the 15th day of July, 1868, for the building of a railroad from Holliday’s Cove via Wellsburg to Wheeling," so says the company's history. There was a "Panhandle Route" through Virginia started by the Pittsburgh & Steubenville Railroad as early as 1858, but the railroad itself wasn't incorporated into a company until 1868, being utilized by the Pittsburg, Cincinnati & St. Louis Railway Company but before being bought out by the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1876.

Anyway, back to the story:

On this August 13, 1859, Leadora was interested in getting the attention of a young man by the name of Gillette. Given that she was to be married in less than two months, the interaction can be considered nothing but innocent; however, the court report, especially the one written in Proffatt's The American Decisions sounds slightly more scandalous: “Shortly after this, the defendant came by and was accosted by Miss Bennett, who informed him that she desired to see him, and he went in. While in the house it was suggested by some one, who is unimportant, that they should attend a funeral which was to take place at a church at some distance from the house where they were; a lady present remarked that the distance was too great to walk, and Miss Bennett suggested that ‘there were the horses, and he [the defendant] could drive us down.’” The quotes above are from court testimonial in Leadora’s own words.

Agreeing, Gillette unfastened the horses and drove the two women, Leadora and the unnamed woman—perhaps the friend Leadora was visiting—downtown to attend a funeral.

Along the way, tragedy struck. The horses, startled by something, bolted. In Cases on the Law of Agency by Floyd Russell Mechem (1893), it is described that, “the horses became frightened, ran away, threw out the occupants of the carriage, demolished the carriage and killed themselves.” Easily the equivalent of getting into an accident, totaling the car but being able to walk away from the crash uninjured.

It isn’t clear how Leadora and her brother returned to the Bennett farm in the country; they were obviously without the horses and carriage, but it is easy to understand Abraham Bennett’s rage. For starters, his son left the carriage unattended, and then Leadora allowed another man to drive it, which led to its destruction.

It makes sense to assume that money was tight for the Bennett family, as they had become farmers, not necessarily the most lucrative of professions in Minnesota. For already strapped families, horses and buggies weren’t cheap. An inexpensive horse in the mid 1800s would set a man back around $100, at a time when $20 a month was a good income. The carriage, on the other hand, depending on how nice it was, could be anywhere from as much as the horse to several hundred dollars. Given Bennett’s status and his income, Leadora and Gillette’s blunder on August 13, cost Abraham perhaps around $200.

He was quite angry, so much so that he contacted his lawyers, secured the law firm of Sanborn, French and Lund in St. Paul and sued the Gillette family for the loss of his property, entering the Minnesota legal system with case Minnesota 423: 74 AM. DBO. 774, Bennett v. Gillette. The case was heard in December 1859, two months after Leadora’s wedding (though she’s still referred to as “Miss” in the court records).

Despite Bennett’s suggested lack of funds, he found himself one of the best law firms in all of St. Paul, and its lead council led a spectacular life, as outlined in Lawrence A. Martin’s 2001 article called “Observations on Architectural Styles, Part 3: St. Albans/Lower Crocus Hill”:

“John Benjamin Sanborn moved to St. Paul in 1854, was Minnesota adjutant general and quartermaster-general at the start of the American Civil War, was Colonel of the Fourth Minnesota Regiment, participated at Iuka, the Vicksburg campaign, Corinth, Port Gibson, Raymond, Jackson, Champion Hills, Jefferson City, Booneville, Independence, Big Blue, Little Blue, Osage, Marias des-Cygnes, and Newtonia, conducted a campaign against the Indians of the Southwest in 1865, opened all the lines of communication to the territories of Colorado and New Mexico, and terminated all hostilities with the Comanche, Kiowa, Cheyenne, Arapahoe, and Apaches of the upper Arkansas River in treaties in 1865, was a member, with Kit Carson and William Bent, of a federal Indian peace commission, was a member of the Minnesota House in 1859-1860, 1872, and 1881-1882 and of the Minnesota Senate in 1861 and 1891-1894, was a member of the law firm of Sanborn, French and Lund, was a member of the Minnesota Historical Society for 48 years, married Catherine Hall in 1857, married Rachel Rice, the daughter of Edmund Rice, married Anna Elmer Nixon in 1865, was the father of John B. Sanborn, a member of the Minnesota House 1913-1916, died in St. Paul of arteriosclerosis, cerebral thrombosis, and gangrene of the foot, and is buried in Oakland Cemetery.”

From Pen Pictures of St. Paul, Minnesota, and Biographical Sketches of Old Settlers, From the Earliest Settlement of the City, Up to and Including the Year 1857: “John B. Sanborn was born in Epsom, New Hampshire, December 5, 1826, the youngest of five children. Interested in the law, he attended one quarter at Dartmouth College (1851-1852) but left to join the law office of Asa Fowler in Concord. He was admitted to the bar in 1854, and moved West, settling in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he and his partners began the firm of Sanborn, French and Lund on January 1, 1855. He maintained an active role with the firm until ca. 1880.”

Unfortunately for our principles in this story, all of Sanborn’s training and experience wasn’t much help. He lost his case, Abraham Bennett was out money and a team of horses, and Leadora was probably still in trouble…though this time she was Leadora Bennett Whitcomb.

The presiding judge in the case was Charles E. Flandrau, who offered his ruling on behalf of the three presiding judges in the Minnesota Supreme Court: “In this case, we cannot see how there was any impropriety in the daughter of the plaintiff using the carriage which had been sent into the city for her for any of the general purposes which such property is devoted to in families, either in conveying her to a friend's, or to church, as in this instance; nor do we think she exceeded the limits of a prudent exercise of her privileges, by extending them to her friends who were present. She certainly did not by so doing violate any known law of courtesy, but we think exhibited a degree of forethought and prudence in securing the services of the defendant to drive the horses, which was commendable to her judgment. We do not think the defendant can be said to have taken the property at all, or to have had it under his control or in his custody or possession, but he was simply a passenger at the invitation of the plaintiff's daughter, who had competent and adequate authority, by virtue of her relation to the plaintiff, to use the carriage and horses for the purpose for which they were being applied. The case does not make out any negligence on the part of the defendant in the manner in which he drove or otherwise, and we see no principle upon which he can be made liable for the loss the plaintiff has sustained. It is one of those unfortunate accidents for which the law furnishes no redress.”

“The judgment of the court ... is affirmed.”

Leadora and George Whitcomb lived in several places over the course of the next 20 years—Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois (mostly in Chicago), but finally ended up in Los Angeles in 1884 on land that would one day be Glendora. Written by Virginia Whitcomb Sloan in 1945 for Helen Kennard Bettin’s book, This I Remember, Leadora’s youngest daughter, writes: “My mother missed Chicago and her friends. The quail on the place increased her home sickness by their call, ‘Chi-ca-go.’”

Leadora made many trips back to Chicago, as evidenced by the records of the 1895 Directory of the Oakland M.E. Church and Sunday School. That year, Leadora served on the Women’s Foreign Missionary Society as the Second Vice President, which “meets the first Thursday afternoon of each month, in the lecture room. Luncheon served at 12:30. Devotional exercises at 1:45. Literary and business session from 2 to 4. Every lady of the church is invited.” According to the directory, the Whitcombs (which included George Dexter and Leadora, their daughters Leadora and Elizabeth and their son William Card and his wife Julia Chamblin) are included under resident members and all listed to reside at “The Tudor” on the corner of Ellis and 42nd Street in Chicago. It is unclear whether it is a hotel or a nickname for their house (from the famous Tudor Hotel in New York City), but it is only five blocks from the Oakland church.

One strange inclusion in the Directory of the Oakland M.E. Church and Sunday School is that it lists a Virginia Whitcomb as being a part of Bible Class Number Four (coincidentally taught by a F.A. Gillette) at living at 191 44th Street. In 1895, Virginia, if she was George and Leadora’s daughter, would have been 18 years old, hardly an age to be going to Sunday School now days, but back in 1895 it was customary to be in Sunday School until adulthood. What is more strange is that she is not listed as living with the rest of the Whitcomb family.

As a side note, Virginia (George and Leadora’s youngest daughter) would grow up to become an artist. According to Edan Hughes’ Artists in California, 1786-1940: “While in Los Angeles in 1900, Whitcomb studied at the School of Art and Design. Her married name was Sloan at the time of her death there on Jan. 1, 1947.”

Abstracted from the 25th Anniversary sermon delivered by the Pastor, Dr. P. H. Swift, Sunday evening, March 4th, 1894: The Oakland M. E. Church was organized March 7th, 1869. But, as is usually the case, there was a beginning back of the beginning. So far as any record can be obtained the first Methodist services conducted in this vicinity were class meetings, which were held during the year 1867, at the residence of Mr. M. Van Allen, who then lived at No. 28 Langley street. During that year an attempt was made to organize a church and put up a building. Lots were secured on Cottage Grove Avenue, and lumber enough promised for the erection of a chapel. But the plan failed and the lots were given up. Nothing further was done till late in the fall of 1868. It is probable that the first one to propose the organization of a Church in this community was Mr. Asahel Otis, who broached the subject to Mr. William Rand. The latter gentleman at once offered the use of his parlors as a place where Methodist services might be held.

The Oakland M.E. Church building at 3956 S Langley Avenue is still on the corner of Oakwood Boulevard and Langley Avenue in Chicago, though in 1918 it changed ownership and became Blackwell Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church.


The image at the top of this page is Leadora Bennett standing in front of her 1910 Cadillac... again with a chauffeur.