Pod Insights Stuff You Missed in History Class Marjorie Merriweather Post About this episode Marjorie Merriweather Post is most often mentioned today as the person who built Mar-a-Lago. But she was a unique figure as a woman who helmed a huge corporation when she was still in her 20s in the early 20th century.
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2:09 Holly Frey? Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeart Radio.
2:20 Holly Frey? Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frey. And I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So Marjorie Merriweather Post came up in my research when I was working on Clarence Byrd's Eye quite recently, but she has also been mentioned in the news a lot lately, just kind of offhandedly. And that's because she was the person who built Mar-a-Lago, which is in the news a lot. She actually willed it to the National Park Service when she died. We're going to talk about how that transpired and a lot more today because Marjorie Post was a woman who is just fascinating to me. She helmed a huge corporation when she was still in her twenties, in the early 20th century. And she represents this unique
3:01 Holly Frey? combination of a life that was led with incredible opulence, but also paired with a very serious, hands-on dedication to philanthropy. And she expanded her wealth in her lifetime. It wasn't as though she was trying to get rid of it all. But as she matured, she seemed to see that expansion as a way to ensure that she could continue to fund the charities and initiatives that she believed in. Also, her personal life was just so messy, girl, Marjorie. And we'll talk about all- I will say, as I was reading through it, at one point, I got confused. I was like, wait, who is she married now? How many? And some of the husbands have the same first name to make it extra confusing.
3:44 Holly Frey? We will talk about all that today and certainly more behind the scenes on Friday. But we're going to talk about Marjorie Merriweather Post. Heads up, there are a couple of sensitive topics that appear in today's episode. We're not going to spend a ton of time on them, but I just want you to know they're coming. We do have a mention of a death by suicide and also a very brief mention of a miscarriage.
4:07 Tracy V. Wilson? So to talk about Marjorie, first, we need to talk about her father, Charles William Post, who went by CW, was born in Springfield, Illinois, on October 24th, 1854. His father, also named Charles, had chased the early California gold rush, but then settled into a life in Illinois in the farm equipment business. His mother Caroline was a writer.
4:32 Holly Frey? CW enrolled in Illinois Industrial College as a young teenager, but he didn't finish. He convinced his parents that he would be better off joining the workforce. So at 15, he started working for his father. He moved to a different farm equipment company in Chicago after a while, and he lived there in Chicago until he was 22. And then he opened his own general store, using money that he borrowed from his mother to fund it. That store was in Kansas, but it didn't quite work out. CW did not stay there. He sold his business and returned home after less than a year as an entrepreneur.
5:10 Tracy V. Wilson? He did still want to own his own business. And after marrying a young woman named Ella Merriweather, he opened his own farming equipment company. But the company struggled, and Post had what's often referred to as a nervous breakdown, although some accounts make it seem more like a physical health issue. He and Ella moved to Texas for a change of scenery, in the hope that that would help. But then by 1891, he was in Michigan, in John Harvey Kellogg's sanitarium, as his health was continuing to decline. He had an array of symptoms. There were digestive issues, insomnia and headaches, plus what's usually called nervous exhaustion. There's been speculation over the years
5:52 Tracy V. Wilson? that he may have been grappling with a condition like depression or an advanced anxiety disorder that would not have been diagnosed that way at the time.
6:02 Holly Frey? CW's time with Kellogg was not entirely successful for Post in terms of getting him better. But he admired the sanitarium's program, and he really did think it was ultimately beneficial. After he left the sanitarium, he sought additional help through prayer with Christian scientists. And he came to believe through this group that healing was something that you could do with your mind. And that became the basis of a book that he wrote titled, "I Am Well."
6:30 Tracy V. Wilson? After he recovered, he continued to think about the strict diet that Kellogg had prescribed. We have an episode on John Harvey Kellogg where we talk about this more. I will say, I wrote that. I was probably easier on him then than I would be after many more years of living in the world we live in. He was such a believer in this cereal-based approach to health that he designed a cereal beverage called Postum that was designed to confer nutritional benefits of grains to consumers. Postum was meant to be drunk in the morning instead of coffee, which Post believed was causing innumerable health problems all
7:10 Tracy V. Wilson? around the globe. He used that rhetoric a lot in his early advertising. Initially, Postum was sold through the mail, but Post eventually convinced grocers to carry it. Soon, he introduced Grape-Nuts cereal, and the Postum Limited Company was officially launched in 1896. From there, he continued to introduce a variety of cereal products, all of them intended to improve consumers' health. This worked. Post became a millionaire, and he was also accused on multiple occasions of stealing recipes from Kellogg.
7:48 Holly Frey? Yeah, he seemed to outrun those problems, though, because his company just grew and grew. CW's daughter, Marjorie Merriweather Post, was born on March 15, 1887. And at that point, the Posts were once again living in Springfield, Illinois. But that also meant that she ended up spending a lot of her childhood in Battle Creek, Michigan, after the family moved there for CW's health. Once the Postum Company launched, which it did in Michigan and was successful, Marjorie went from being the daughter of a failed entrepreneur to becoming a wealthy heiress. She was the Posts' only child, and she had been part of building the company with her father, initially in small ways, like she worked alongside
8:30 Holly Frey? him in jobs like labeling jars. But from an early age, Marjorie was encouraged by her father to learn all she could about the business, something that seems kind of wild when you consider that she could not vote or have a line of credit in her own name. This kind of problem will come up later in her life, as we'll see. But this went beyond basic lessons for Post, because as Marjorie aged up, he took her to more and more high-level aspects of the business, to the point that she accompanied her father on business trips and even attended meetings with him.
9:04 Tracy V. Wilson? He also gave her a small fortune of her own when she was very young. She got shares of postum stock when she was still a child. As a teenager, she was worth several million dollars and all of C W's lessons in business were intended to teach her how to manage that money. He was very worried that when she found herself wealthy at such a young age, she would be foolish and extravagant with her fortune.
9:31 Holly Frey? In September of 1902, Marjorie started attending Mount Vernon Seminary for women because her father also wanted to ensure that Marjorie, who was from New Money, was as educated and poised as any other woman in society.
9:46 Tracy V. Wilson? But C W also added considerable stress to Marjorie's life. In 1904, just a few months after she had completed her studies at Mount Vernon Seminary, C W divorced Marjorie's mother Ella and remarried less than two weeks later to his secretary, Lila Young. C W tried to force a bond between his daughter and his new wife ahead of this marriage by making Lila Marjorie's travel companion. Marjorie, though, is said to have gotten wind of this whole plan and was understandably furious.
10:21 Holly Frey? Yeah, her relationship with her dad was one where she adored him and was also angry at him a lot of the time. In a moment, we're going to talk about Marjorie's first marriage, but before we do that, we will pause for a quick sponsor break.
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14:25 Holly Frey? A year after C.W. and Lila were married, Marjorie, who was 19 at the time, married attorney Edward Close on December 5, 1905. And as a wedding gift, C.W. built the newlyweds a massive mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut, which was named The Boulders. And by all accounts, this home sounds like Marjorie basically lived in her own private hotel. It was huge. It had a full staff. It was basically a case where she could just wander around and ask for things and they would magically appear for her. This also had its own wing that was for C.W. to stay in when he visited. Close, her new husband was in his mid twenties and he was just starting out on what
15:07 Holly Frey? would be a very successful law career in Manhattan. While Edward worked to build his own practice, Marjorie stayed busy with personal development and volunteer work. She worked with the Red Cross and she also took classes at a private school as a drop-in student to the art courses that interested her.
15:26 Tracy V. Wilson? Two and a half years into the marriage, Marjorie and Edward welcomed their first child, a daughter named Adelaide, who was born on July 28, 1908. A second daughter named Eleanor was born a year and a half after Adelaide, on December 12, 1909. For the next couple of years, Marjorie was busy with her little girls and with a growing art collection. But in the autumn of 1912, Marjorie's mother, Ella, died in her sleep. Ella had gone out with a friend the night that she died, and it seemed like a very peaceful end, but Marjorie really blamed her father for the passing of her 62-year-old mother. She believed that her mother had never gotten over being just abruptly cast aside for another
16:11 Tracy V. Wilson? woman after years of devotion and seeing her father through some of the hardest times of his life. Marjorie had to handle all of the funeral arrangements herself.
16:23 Holly Frey? As Marjorie was grieving her mother, her father's health, which had never been particularly robust, started to decline. In the spring of 1914, C. W. Post was moved from his summer home in Santa Barbara, California, to Rochester, Minnesota for an appendectomy. And that move was because he believed only the Mayo brothers were capable of handling the procedure. And the hope was that this surgery was going to alleviate some ongoing medical issues that are only reported in write-ups as a stomach disorder, and that an ailing appendix had actually been the cause of all of his problems. And his post-surgery recovery went quite well, and when he was healed enough, he returned to his California home.
17:08 Holly Frey? But soon, his old health problems returned, and they were bad enough that he had to have a nurse with him around the clock at home.
17:15 Tracy V. Wilson? On the morning of May 9th, C.W. asked his wife to run some business errands for him. And when he was gone, he told his nurse that he wanted to be left alone to rest. He stated, "I am very nervous. My mind is perfectly clear, but I cannot control my nerves." The nurse left him alone, and once she was gone, although still in the house, C.W. Post died by suicide from a gunshot wound.
17:43 Tracy V. Wilson? His doctor, J.C. Bainbridge, ruled the tragedy the result of a "fit of temporary insanity." He was buried in Battle Creek, Michigan.
17:53 Holly Frey? Marjorie, as we said, was C.W.'s only child, and with his death, she became one of two inheritors to his fortune, which was valued at $22 million. So that split was something of a surprise. C.W. had split his estate between Marjorie and her stepmother, Lila, in his will. That will was published in the paper, so everybody knew about it. He separated out his various real estate holdings between the two women, but then he gave each of them half of Postum. Marjorie, who had been promised the entire company since she was a child, fought this will, and she and her husband, who, again, remember, was an attorney,
18:34 Holly Frey? were able to track down a document from 1895, when Postum was founded, in which C.W. and his first wife, Ella, had agreed that their only child would inherit the majority of the company. So with that paper in hand and threatening litigation, this made Lila Post give up her shares of Postum in exchange for a cash settlement.
18:57 Tracy V. Wilson? Marjorie had inherited the cereal company, and it fell entirely to her to run the family business. She was 27 and suddenly in charge of a $20 million company. But her husband had to perform some of her duties because while she was technically the boss, she was also a woman, and there was a serious stigma against a woman being an active part of certain business gatherings, like meetings of the board of directors. Ed had to be the one to do that. Marjorie and Ed moved to Battle Creek, where Postum was headquartered to more effectively manage things.
19:33 Holly Frey? Yeah, he was sort of serving as her proxy throughout all of this because even though she had been to board meetings when she was younger, it was like, oh, she is the guest of the owner. That's okay. But as a woman herself, just without a dad to accompany her, as gross as it makes me feel to even say that phrase, not accepted. But Ed and Marjorie did not live in Battle Creek full time. They split their time between there and Connecticut because he still had his practice in Manhattan. And then in 1916, they also purchased a home on Manhattan's Upper East Side. And the home on 92nd Street would become an incredible example of interior design, as well as a place where an impressive art collection would be displayed.
20:16 Tracy V. Wilson? 1917 offered a lot of challenges around the globe as World War I began. And for the Closes on a personal level, one evening in May, the Closes were out for the evening when they received an urgent message to return to the Boulders because the house was on fire. Their daughters and dog had been taken away to safety, but their massive home had just quickly become engulfed. There had been an explosion when the fire reached the gas lines and the smoke and water from the fire hoses had destroyed a lot of the art and antiques that she had collected. After that, Marjorie decided not to try to rebuild. She and Edward sold the property to a school and they made Manhattan their East Coast home.
21:01 Holly Frey? Marjorie recognized that her level of financial privilege came with the responsibility to help others during wartime. And she did this by funding a Red Cross hospital in France. This effort initially was met with very bad luck, though. Her husband, Ed, and his brother were aboard the SS Saratoga as it set sail from New York loaded with supplies for this hospital. But it didn't even make it out of the harbor before there was an accident. The SS Panama accidentally rammed the Saratoga in a case of harbor traffic confusion and the Saratoga went down. All of the people aboard were successfully evacuated, but the hospital supplies were all
21:42 Holly Frey? lost. Marjorie Post was still dedicated to the mission, though, and she paid for a duplicate shipment to be loaded aboard the SS Finland eight days later. The Finland made its way across the Atlantic just fine, but it was attacked as it neared the French coast. But this time, it was part of a convoy and Allied forces were able to defend it and get the supplies to the Number Eight Base Hospital in Savonay. Edward had once again traveled with the supplies and because he was also an officer in the US Army during the conflict, he stayed in France for the remainder of the war. Marjorie continued her philanthropic work for the war effort back home, using her prominent social and business standing to fundraise for the Red Cross.
22:27 Tracy V. Wilson? During the war, Marjorie also became active in the suffrage movement and met President Woodrow Wilson, along with a group of other women, to discuss the matter in late 1917. Her sense of the need for women to have equal rights and more personal power continued to become a focus as she lived as a single parent during the war and watched a lot of other women also manage their homes without help from the men in their lives.
22:53 Holly Frey? When the war ended and Ed came home, the reunion was less than ideal. Marjorie had realized that in a lot of ways, she was actually happier without Ed. One point of contention was his drinking, although whether he drank to excess or misused alcohol is actually a matter of debate. Marjorie was not much of a drinker, and she had a very hard line on not allowing guests in her home to be intoxicated at all. This was influenced, no doubt, by her father, who had always advocated for clean living and eating and his ties to Christian Science, and she did not believe alcohol was part of that in any way, the same way her father did.
23:38 Holly Frey? Ed Close enjoyed a drink from time to time, and Marjorie found it absolutely abhorrent the first time she saw him intoxicated. And although friends and family assured her that he was not a habitual drinker and stated throughout the years that Ed was also not an especially heavy drinker, it just never sat well with Marjorie that he sometimes liked to go drinking with friends. Additionally, she and Ed had kind of just grown apart. She had really enjoyed her life of independence during the war, where she didn't have to consult with or even consider Ed when making decisions. So adjusting back to being a couple was something that they both struggled with. By the end of 1919, they were divorced.
24:20 Tracy V. Wilson? Despite having found a lot of satisfaction in her independence, Marjorie soon got married again. On July 7, 1920, she married Edward Francis Hutton. The two of them ran in the same social circles for years. She'd initially met the stockbroker in 1917 at a party, but they were both married at the time. There didn't seem to be any kind of romantic aspect to this interaction. But then in 1919, they ran into each other again at a social event. Marjorie was divorced, and Hutton was a widower at the time. They really hit it off immediately. Unlike Close, who had served on the Postum Board of Directors but did not really have a head for business,
25:03 Tracy V. Wilson? E.F. Hutton excelled in the business world and had gained a level of respect, prestige, and reputation that not many people could match. He was able to understand her responsibilities at Postum and to offer advice as a board member that came from a vast and sound knowledge.
25:22 Holly Frey? Marjorie also asked her friend Colby Chester to become the assistant treasurer of the company. A lot of the Board of Directors members were her uncles. They were her father's brothers. And she had long been concerned that these men were making a number of missteps in the way that they ran things, but she really needed to be sure. So this was all a plan where she wanted them to teach Colby everything about running the company and she was hoping that Colby, who was a longtime family friend, she was very close with his wife, would see some problems as an outsider and raise questions about them. And this plan actually worked perfectly. It was part of a larger effort on Marjorie's part to reinvigorate the company with younger executives who understood
26:06 Holly Frey? the rapidly changing post-war business landscape. So as problems with the existing board's work came to light, one by one, they were carefully replaced. Presumably, they were given very lovely and generous severance packages or retirement packages. Colby, over time, became the company president and her husband, E.F. Hutton, became chairman of the board. Marjorie was taking the company in a new direction and she was planning to focus a bit more on philanthropy and growing her family. So she wanted to step away from her business role with Postum a little bit. And with E.F. and Colby in place, she felt really confident that she could do so. It was thanks to E.F.'s acumen with numbers
26:50 Holly Frey? that the company was able to go public.
26:53 Tracy V. Wilson? On December 29, 1923, Marjorie welcomed her third child, a daughter named Nadinya. She had been hoping for a boy. E.F.'s son from a previous marriage had died in a horseback riding accident not long after the couple got married. She had kind of wanted to fill that void for her second husband. She'd had an earlier pregnancy, earlier in their marriage, but that had ended in a miscarriage. And as Marjorie was getting older, Nadinya's birth would be her last one. Her name was a nod to her father's nickname, which is Ned.
27:30 Holly Frey? Although she went by, apparently, Deanie or Deema throughout her life. Following Nadine's arrival, Marjorie and EF had a lot of movement in their lives, but it actually consolidated their world more solidly in Manhattan. They sold their townhouse to a developer who built an apartment building, but they did so on the condition that he include a large multi-story apartment on the top of it for their family to live in. This moved them up away from street noise, which was growing because as Manhattan's population grew, people were moving north. It also gave them an added sense of security and it freed them from needing to keep up a home in its surrounding lot.
28:12 Holly Frey? As construction was underway, they also moved Postum's headquarters from Michigan to New York.
28:19 Tracy V. Wilson? Post's marriage to Hutton was one that fostered a lot of achievement and financial growth, but also some serious challenges. We will talk about that after we hear from the sponsors that keep stuff you missed in history class going.
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32:20 Tracy V. Wilson? From the time Marjorie and EF Hutton got married, they started expanding their real estate holdings together. They bought a summer home in the Adirondacks in 1921. And then in the mid 1920s, they broke ground on a new estate in Palm Beach, Florida. They hired an architect and designer from Vienna named Joseph Urban for the project. Urban's portfolio was impressive. He had designed palace spaces in Egypt and Hungary, for example. But he was best known in the US at that time for being the set designer for Broadway's Ziegfeld Theater. Palm Beach had become a popular getaway for New York's wealthy set, and Marjorie and EF had had a home there for a long time.
33:02 Tracy V. Wilson? But it was becoming increasingly apparent that they needed more space, especially because Marjorie was always interested in throwing bigger and bigger parties. Once the idea to build a mansion had cemented itself, Marjorie took a very careful approach to finding exactly the right piece of property. She wanted ocean views and plenty of space, but she was also pragmatic. She studied surveys of the area to find the most suitable tracts of land where the unpredictable and powerful weather was not likely to destroy what they were planning. And what they were planning was massive. Urban had designed a 115-room mansion
33:44 Tracy V. Wilson? that Marjorie named using a Latin phrase that meant "from sea to lake" to describe this property's position on the coast. Another architect, Marion Wyeth, had been involved in the project in the beginning before Marjorie moved on to urban, but Wyeth was brought back on to oversee a lot of the practical needs of the construction. Construction totaled at about $2.5 million by the time it was finished in 1927. The original budget had been $1 million.
34:14 Holly Frey? One of the legacies of the construction process for Mar-a-Lago that would define Marjorie Post's image in Palm Beach and beyond was her recognition that people with money should help others whenever possible. In 1926, there had been a bust in the building boom in Palm Beach, which led to a lot of worker layoffs and bankruptcies of land development companies that had been buying and selling properties using Cook data to bolster their standings. At that point, as it looked like Palm Beach might implode, there was a concern that maybe Marjorie should not be pouring so much money into Mar-a-Lago, but she felt very strongly that she could not halt construction because she didn't want to put more people out of work.
34:57 Tracy V. Wilson? As we mentioned in our episode on Clarence Birdseye, in 1929, Marjorie Post saw to the purchase of Birdseye's frozen food company, its machinery, and all of its patents. The business industry saw this as a wild and foolhardy move. Birdseye's entire company had been valued at less than $2 million, and Post bought it for $23.5 million. But she had done her due diligence and had inspected the company and reviewed its financial situation and come to the conclusion that it was really ahead of its time and that Birdseye had created a process that made frozen food a viable market.
35:38 Tracy V. Wilson? Posthum became General Foods not long after the purchase, as Marjorie envisioned a wider range of offerings for Posthum to move it forward as the 20th century continued.
35:49 Holly Frey? Marjorie Post herself changed significantly in the 1930s. The Depression really activated her sense of obligation to use her money to help others, more than she had already done before. One of the first things she did as the Depression hit was set up what was called the Marjorie Post Hutton Canteen in Manhattan. This was a food distribution center that was originally planned for the needs of women and children. A second center, the Edward F. Hutton Food Station for Men, was also opened in Manhattan, but in another location. But soon, the needs of the neighborhoods dictated the clientele, rather than any pre-arranged ideas that Marjorie and EF may have had about who would get food where,
36:33 Holly Frey? and the rules about who could get their food from these canteens loosened. More canteens were opened around the city as the Depression wore on. Marjorie also donated to and established many other charitable organizations throughout the 1930s, and this was a case where she was not a woman who just sat in her beautiful home and wrote checks. She was involved in these efforts. She went to the canteens and worked shifts. She hosted events there. She organized events to raise money, where she was always front and center encouraging people that were similarly wealthy to give. Marjorie had been really spendy in her 20s and 30s. She was known to buy a lot of things and give lavish parties, and this was something
37:16 Holly Frey? that her first two husbands often cited as causing some friction. But in her 40s, as her focus turned to helping more consistently to other people, she became less and less willing to spend money on the showy things that had once garnered her interest. She did, however, continue to purchase art. This is something I'm not focusing a lot on in this episode, but she really was an amazing collector of art, jewelry, antiques, sculpture, everything. She saw this all as an investment in a way that she could safeguard important works for future generations to enjoy. Although Marjorie and EF Hutton had for a long time been true partners in business
37:58 Holly Frey? as well as in life, their marriage soured over time. Some accounts say that the decisions Marjorie made in the late 1920s, so opting to spend money when a lot of other people were choosing to save it, had caused some tension between her and Hutton.
38:15 Tracy V. Wilson? Additionally, Marjorie believed that her husband was cheating on her. When she had proof, which she needed to file for divorce in the state of New York at the time, she did not tell her husband initially. She waited until he was at the pier bidding her adieu on a trip to Europe that he was supposed to be joining her on later. Right before the departure, she told him she knew everything and that she was divorcing him. Uh, we don't know a lot about how the divorce trial played out. The entire thing was private and the proceedings were sealed. But on September 7th, 1935, they were officially divorced. E.F. resigned from his role at General Foods three months later.
38:57 Tracy V. Wilson? And then after that, Marjorie filed for sole custody of their daughter and got it.
39:02 Holly Frey? Although Post was described as deeply distraught at finding out that E.F. Hutton, who she had loved deeply, had been unfaithful. She did find love once again, and pretty quickly. While she was planning the divorce, she met a lawyer named Joseph Davies. He was actually a friend of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And she and Davies fell in love almost instantly. Joseph, who went by Joe, was also married when the two of them met. But he was smitten and he started wooing Marjorie anyway. And they soon decided that Joe also needed to get a divorce. Joe's wife went to a divorce ranch in Reno to wait out the required time for her to declare residency and attain a divorce there.
39:48 Holly Frey? Four days after E.F. Hutton resigned at General Foods, Marjorie and Joe were married.
39:54 Tracy V. Wilson? The following year brought additional significant change. While Marjorie had previously stocked up the Board of Directors at General Foods with people she trusted to run it, she had still maintained a controlling share of the company. And in April of 1936, she became a member of the Board of Directors in her own right. Six months later, Joe was appointed as the U.S. Ambassador to the USSR, the second person to hold that post. So in early 1937, the couple moved to Moscow. Marjorie's formal dinners at the Ambassadorial Residence, known as Spazo House, were a vital part of the relationship that Joe was able to develop with his Soviet counterparts.
40:35 Tracy V. Wilson? The couple worked together in Moscow for two years before Joe got a new assignment in Brussels in 1938.
40:43 Tracy V. Wilson? In 1939, they returned home to the US where Joe became special advisor to the Secretary of State. From there, Davies was assigned to a dizzying array of impressive government positions, working at the highest levels of the US government. For years, the Davies focused on fostering and maintaining relations between the United States and Russia, and they were a Washington DC power couple. During the war, Joe published a book titled Mission to Moscow, which was very sympathetic to Stalinism, was of course immediately controversial and seen as propaganda, but it was also hugely successful. In 1945, Joe was given the Order of Lenin by the Supreme Soviet.
41:26 Holly Frey? Yeah, Mission to Moscow was eventually also developed into a movie, which was also considered propaganda. This would seem so scandalous, but they did seem to weather it. As with her previous marriages, though, the relationship between Marjorie Post and Davies took a bad turn. In this case, Joe, who was more than a decade older than Marjorie, started to become really possessive and controlling. He seemed suspicious of her, like maybe she would cheat on him or leave him, and he, according to her, would just never leave her alone. While she may have been contemplating ending things, Davies was diagnosed with intestinal cancer in 1950, and at that point, she felt she couldn't leave him.
42:10 Holly Frey? His treatment was successful, but for a while, it seemed like she was just going to stick it out, until she discovered that an estate that Joe had bought but which they had renovated together using her money had been put exclusively in Joe's name, and she felt like he had done this behind her back and that it was a really sneaky move to take over some of her property. And this catalyzed a rapid downward spiral of bitter arguments between the two over their assets, as the breakup just became inevitable. Between real estate and art pieces, the couple had acquired a lot of stuff in their 20 years together. And this time, Marjorie went to a divorce ranch in Idaho to speed the end of the marriage along.
42:55 Tracy V. Wilson? Over her lifetime, Post was honored with a lot of awards for her charitable work. In 1957, she received one of the most prestigious from the French government when she was made a member of the French Legion of Honor. The award was in recognition for her support of the World War I hospital, as well as money she raised to fund a 1955 Marie Antoinette exhibition at the Palace of Versailles.
43:20 Holly Frey? In December 1954, before her divorce from Davies, Marjorie purchased a property in Washington DC with a long-term plan. She wanted not to just make the estate, which she named Hillwood, into a place where she could live, but also to establish it as a museum. She wanted her expansive art collection to be available to the public, and for that access to it to be at the estate. She paid for massive renovations at Hillwood, and over the years that followed, she also launched a lot of campaigns to expand its offerings to include outdoor as well as indoor areas for people to enjoy. Hillwood is a museum today, and it displays Post's quote about what she wished for the
44:03 Holly Frey? estate on its website, quote, "I want young Americans to see how someone lived in the 20th century and how this person could collect works of art the way I have. I want to share this with the rest of the world." Incidentally, as we record this, the US is still in the midst of its government shutdown, and Hillwood is currently free to visit for federal workers with ID, quote, "to seek respite and rejuvenation."
44:29 Tracy V. Wilson? When Marjorie turned 70, 181 of her friends donated to a secret project at Hillwood, known as the Friendship Walk, a lush, tree-and-flower-framed path intended to offer a peaceful escape from the day-to-day and to honor Post's many philanthropic efforts. One of these contributors was a widower and businessman who had worked at Westinghouse, named Herbert A. May. And May was obviously very keen on Marjorie. There is not a lot of information about how the two of them started their romance, but they got married in June of 1958. They had two wedding receptions, one in DC and one in Herb's hometown of Pittsburgh.
45:11 Holly Frey? Yeah, he had three adult sons living in Pittsburgh and a lot of family there, so they wanted to celebrate in both places. In the time leading up to that wedding, Post had hardly been idle in her philanthropic work. She sponsored the National Symphony Orchestra. She also lent her voice in support of the creation of a national cultural center in Washington DC. That was what would eventually become known as the Kennedy Center. And she volunteered her time working on that project once it had been approved by Congress.
45:41 Tracy V. Wilson? After the wedding, Post retired from her company's board of directors, although she remained an active participant in shareholder meetings. And she often hosted the board in her home. And she became increasingly focused on that home, Hillwood, as a legacy, hiring people to formally catalog all of the art and antiques she had there.
46:02 Holly Frey? Yeah, she had made some previous efforts at getting her stuff catalogued, but they always seemed to end before they were completed. So that was really the first one that was intensive. In 1964, Post's marriage was engulfed in scandal when photos emerged of her husband Herb in sexual situations with young men. While members of her family had long suspected that Herb might be a closeted gay man, this had never occurred to Marjorie. She was absolutely mortified. The idea of a scandal was very upsetting and embarrassing, and she withdrew from him. But he also had health problems in the immediate aftermath of the truth coming out.
46:45 Holly Frey? First, he experienced a psychological event of some sort. Nobody ever calls it a nervous breakdown, but he clearly was having a lot of issues, probably from the stress of all of this. And then he had a stroke. And Marjorie paid for all of his medical and treatment expenses. But she did also divorce him in August of that year.
47:05 Tracy V. Wilson? For the next nine years, Post continued to acquire art and also made moves to secure her legacy. She had hopeful plans for her two most beloved properties, Hillwood and Mar-a-Lago.
47:19 Tracy V. Wilson? For Hillwood, she hoped it would become part of the Smithsonian's collection. And for Mar-a-Lago, she envisioned it as a federal property. The idea of it as a winter White House was actually hers. And the House Interior Committee approved that plan. Similarly, the Smithsonian approved the gift of Hillwood.
47:41 Holly Frey? As an octogenarian, Post slowly lost her hearing. She had other health issues, which she never publicly disclosed. She also became less and less able to participate in conversations with others as her hearing got worse, and her memory also started to fail. She still hosted parties, but she was not the hostess she had been in her earlier years. She developed pneumonia in early 1973, but then she surprised her entire family by recovering. But her personality had changed after that. She was no longer the amiable, positive person she had been for more than 80 years.
48:20 Holly Frey? And then that summer, her health once again declined, and she died of heart failure on September 12th, 1973.
48:28 Tracy V. Wilson? Although she had made arrangements for those two properties, things did not play out as she had hoped. The Smithsonian returned the Hillwood estate to the Marjorie Merriweather Foundation after concerns that it wasn't going to be possible to use it exclusively as a museum, as Marjorie had wished. The foundation, though, did open it as a museum four years after Post's death.
48:52 Holly Frey? Yeah, apparently the Smithsonian drafted up a usage plan that included, like, "We could use this formal dining room for fundraiser parties." And she was adamant that food would never be in the house once she had died and it became a museum for them. She was very worried that the collection would somehow be damaged if people were in there having parties. So that was not going to work out. They were not on the same page. Mar-a-Lago, which Marjorie had hoped would become part of the National Park Service and which she had willed to the federal government for that use, was determined to not be suitable as a house of state because it was not secure. And that's because it sits right underneath a frequently used flight path out of West Palm Beach.
49:34 Holly Frey? Additionally, running the huge estate was incredibly expensive. Palm Beach didn't want it to become a museum because of traffic concerns. And so it reverted back to Marjorie's foundation, which then spent several years trying to sell it before it was purchased by Donald Trump for $10 million. He immediately complained that it was too expensive to maintain because of property taxes and actually tried to subdivide the property and sell it, but Palm Beach blocked that plan.
50:02 Tracy V. Wilson? The many philanthropic works of Marjorie Merriweather Post continue to benefit people today, and that really was very much her hope. She frequently told people that her firm belief about what to do with a fortune such as hers was, quote, "Keep it moving, make it work, make it create, make it do good, and make it help in many hundreds of ways."
50:26 Holly Frey? I feel like I want to get that, like, done in calligraphy and framed somewhere. It's such a good ideology. I get choked up hearing it, but I have listener mail that's not about that at all.
50:39 Holly Frey? This is from our listener, Mary. This is actually partially about an episode that Tracy did the research on, but then talks about a thing I said. And I want to make sure I'm clear on what I was getting at. So, Mary writes, "Good afternoon, amazing humans. I have some strong opinions about the disappearance of the period belt. I know that it has been replaced by things that are much more environmentally friendly, but I still miss it. I started very early, elementary school age. I didn't want to change a pad because how was I getting that to the bathroom without questions? I was able to wear the period belt in one pad all day. It was glorious. I used to keep track of which store sold the Kotex pads that I needed and buy two to three boxes at a time."
51:22 Holly Frey? Fast forward to my daughter starting and we have found the same joy for her in period panties. She feels protected all the time, but I still wish I could have given her the option of the belts. Side quest, Holly mentioned a fellow podcaster person who was trying to distill Hatch Green Chili booze. This made me giggle and feel proud because I sent a can of them to the savor humans at the beginning of the pandemic and got Annie hooked. It's always fun to hear of people enjoying something I love from the state I grew up in. I will say, just for clarity, Annie is not the person I know that's trying to do infusions with Hatch Chili and their booze. I just didn't want there to be any confusion. And for someone to be like, Annie, how's that booze coming? And Annie go, I don't know what you're talking about. Uh, that's all. For pet tax, Dante is the fluffy 14 year old diabetic wonder
52:07 Holly Frey? cat and Lynn is the calico with more opinions than I can count. She likes her personal space. Dante thinks that is ridiculous. So he does stuff like sitting as close to her as possible without touching her. Ah, siblings. P S. Yes, the thing next to them is a Halloween tree. Take care. Uh, listen, I love a Halloween tree. I fully understand having a pet that loves another pet and that pet doesn't want to receive that love. We're in the midst of a big thing with that right now. Um, and I just, I love all of this. Those kitties are cute as can be. So thank you. Thank you for sending this, this email. If you would like to email us, you can do so at [email protected] . You can also subscribe to the show on the iHeart Radio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows.
52:57 Tracy V. Wilson? Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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