A Secret Life_ The Lies and Scandals of President Grover Cleveland - Charles Lachman [100]
“They engaged me to care for a young child. They said they would pay me for it. They both urged me to and told me several times that I would call him my twin baby. I finally consented, and they left the child.” She said she was told to call the boy Jack.
Minnie recalled the day several weeks later when Dr. King came to her apartment and told her to bring “Jack” to the downtown law offices of Grover Cleveland.
“Who was present at this time?”
“Myself, Maria Halpin, the baby, lawyer, and Dr. King. It was in the forenoon that we went there.”
“Have you seen a picture of Grover Cleveland?”
“I have, and I should say, by the picture, that he was the lawyer who was there. What they took me and the child there for I don’t know, unless it was to ensure Maria Halpin that her child was alive and well.”
Minnie said that when she was compelled to surrender the child after a year, Dr. King was “very anxious” for her to leave Buffalo.
“He charged us over and over again never to tell what we knew about Maria Halpin’s child and used all manner of means to intimidate us and compel us to keep the matter quiet. Dr. King’s wife said to me just before we left Buffalo, ‘Maria Halpin has got that child now, but I will get him and then she will never see him again.’”
The Kendalls settled in Rochester, New Hampshire. William Kendall found work in a factory; Minnie made shoes. It was unnerving that Sarah King was still taking her annual summer vacations in New Hampshire. Three years before, when Minnie was visiting family in Gilmanton, she was shown a photo of a little boy in a checked suit. “That is my Jack,” she recalled saying. She recognized him at once. But how could she be so certain? “I know it is,” Minnie said. “You can’t fool me. I declare it is the boy I nursed—Maria Halpin’s child.” William Kendall, who was present during the interview, corroborated his wife’s account.
What induced Minnie Kendall to finally tell her story? She admitted that she was filled with anxiety about coming forward, but was doing so “in the interest of justice.”
The past was finally catching up to James and Sarah King.
12
“A BULLET THROUGH MY HEART”
DAN LAMONT, CLEVELAND’S right-hand man, sat at his desk frowning. In his hands, he held a letter, which he was so absorbed in reading he was not even aware that William Hudson had stepped into the office. Finally, he looked up and said, “I’m glad you’ve come. I want to talk to you about a perplexing matter.”
Lamont rose from his desk and turned the key to lock his door. He wanted no one but Hudson to hear the story he was about to convey. “I don’t know what to do with these papers. If I show them to the governor, I fear he will put his foot on them. If I conceal them from him and turn them over to the managers of the campaign and he comes to know of it, he’ll be angry.”
Hudson presumed that this must have something to do with Maria Halpin.
Lamont continued. A letter addressed to Grover Cleveland had been sent from a tailor who lived in Millersburg, Kentucky. He was writing to let the governor know that he possessed embarrassing information concerning the private life of James G. Blaine. Lamont showed Hudson the letter. The gist of it was that when Blaine married the former Harriet Stanwood, on March 25, 1851, it had literally been a shotgun wedding. Harriet’s brother had had a rifle aimed at Blaine’s head during the entire ceremony. A son, Stanwood Blaine, had been born to the newlyweds eleven weeks later, on June 18, 1851. It was information, the letter writer maintained, that would “more than” offset this business with Maria Halpin.
The tailor was offering to come to Albany at