A Secret Life_ The Lies and Scandals of President Grover Cleveland - Charles Lachman [93]
Roosevelt read the telegram. He knew James Seacord. Everyone in New Rochelle did. Seacord lived right on Main Street. He was a sixty-nine-year-old descendant from the line of Ambroise Sicard, one of the town’s original Huguenot settlers. The spelling of the name had been anglicized over the decades to Secor, Seacor, Secord, and finally to Seacord. Roosevelt sent a messenger to Seacord’s carpentry shop to tell him that Charles Roosevelt wished to see him on a matter of urgent business. James Seacord dropped everything and went right over.
Roosevelt immediately came to the point and asked Seacord whether Maria Halpin was living at his home. He responded that she was. She was the niece of his wife Harriet, a seamstress who had run a little dressmaking business out of the Seacord house. The Seacords had been childless when they took Maria in to live with them when she was a teenager. She was like a daughter to them, and under Aunt Harriet’s tutelage, she had learned dressmaking skills. She had also learned to speak French in New Rochelle.
Seacord told the lawyer that Maria had been trying to deal with her troubles in Buffalo when he and his wife offered her sanctuary in their tranquil little village where no one would know of her shame. Harriet Seacord had died the previous November, and Maria was now living alone with Uncle James, serving as his housekeeper and keeping the dressmaking business going to make a little money on the side. Maria (Seacord affectionately referred to her as “Rittie”) was now a woman close to fifty years of age, “well preserved” and dignified. She had been living a “quiet, decorous, unobtrusive” life as Seacord’s housekeeper and always conducted herself with propriety.
Charles Roosevelt took it all in then advised Seacord to quit work for the day, return home immediately, and stay there until Roosevelt communicated with him again. In the meantime, he told Seacord, Mrs. Halpin was to remain in “strict seclusion.” No one except for Roosevelt was to be permitted access to the house. As an inducement to follow these directives, Roosevelt said he would guarantee Seacord “liberal compensation.”
James Seacord left the office bewildered by this turn of events. In the meantime, Roosevelt went over all the information he had gleaned from their conversation. His first order of business was to reach out to Lawrence D. Huntington, a wealthy Wall Street broker who was chairman of the Westchester County Democratic Committee. He would know what to do. Roosevelt went to Huntington’s house and informed him that he had Maria Halpin in his back pocket. Time was of the essence. There was no telling when Charles Banks might learn that his telegram had been purloined. Huntington arranged for a telegram to be sent to the right people in Albany. In quick order, he got a response. It reinforced the absolute necessity that the Halpin woman be kept under lock and key.
The next day, a distinguished visitor arrived in New Rochelle. It was Wilson Bissell, Grover Cleveland’s confidant and former law partner. Bissell and Huntington were joined by another Westchester County Democrat, former state assemblyman William H. Catlin, who lived in the nearby village of Port Chester. Bissell told the men that he had come to New Rochelle for the sole purpose of convincing Mrs. Halpin to issue a public statement “pronouncing the story of her alleged relations with the governor a base fabrication.” A plan of action quickly came together, with Catlin in charge of coordinating everything on the local level. Pulling it off was going to be a delicate business.
The following day, another distinguished visitor from Buffalo was seen in New Rochelle. It was Reverend George Ball. The whistle-blower had learned from his Republican friends that Maria Halpin had been found alive in New Rochelle. Ball had come down to