One day while doing research using a newspaper repository, I spotted a very interesting story in an adjacent column. The newspaper was from 1914, and the story was titled “Society Woman Ask $14,916 for Tracing Financier’s Ancestors.”1 Interesting, not something you see everyday in a newspaper from this era! That was a fair amount of money in 1914. In today’s money, that would be more than $400,000.
Reading on, the story gets even more intriguing. Mrs. Marion Thornton Egbert, the professional genealogist, was a former Chicago society girl. She was suing her client for breaking the terms of their contract. Her client was Percival W. Clement, former president of the Rutland railroad, who would later be elected as governor of Vermont!
Clearly, I needed to investigate both Marion Thornton Egbert and Percival W. Clement.
The article goes on to say that two suits had been filed against Clement by Mrs. Egbert– one for breach of contract to trace his “family tree”, and a second suit seeking the monetary value of a diamond ring that Mr. Clements reportedly “converted to his own use”.
Why pray tell, would he have taken Mrs. Egbert’s diamond ring, and converted it to his own use? I believe there’s more to this than meets the eye. What will I find next regarding this story of Mrs. Egbert, the professional genealogist who sued her client in 1914!? Stay tuned.
- “Society Woman Ask $14,916 for Tracing Financier’s Ancestors,” The Morning Herald, Uniontown, Pennsylvania, 24 Jan 1914, P4, C3 (www.newspapers.com).