November 12, 2025 • 43 mins
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.
Research:
- Britannica Editors. "C.W. Post". Encyclopedia Britannica, 22 Oct. 2025, https://www.britannica.com/biography/C-W-Post
- “C.W. Post a Suicide in California Home.” New York Times. May 10, 1914. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1914/05/10/100089022.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0
- “The Diplomatic Legacy of Marjorie Merriweather Post.” National Museum of American Diplomacy. April 8, 2021. https://diplomacy.state.gov/stories/the-diplomatic-legacy-of-marjorie-merriweather-post/
- Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens. https://hillwoodmuseum.org/
- “Mrs. Marjorie Merriweather Post Is Dead at 86.” New York Times. Sept. 13, 1973.
- Gruson, Kerry. “Post Home for Sale for $20 Million.” New York Times. July 16, 1981. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1981/07/16/195929.html?pageNumber=59
- Martin, Roland. "Marjorie Merriweather Post". Encyclopedia Britannica, 8 Sep. 2025, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Marjorie-Merriweather-Post
- Merolle, Guilhem. “Marjorie Merriweather Post’s most famous jewels.” Collectissim. Dec. 15, 2024. https://www.collectissim.com/en/marjorie-merriweather-post-most-famous-jewels/
- Reid, Jan. “C.W. Post.” Texas Monthly. March 1987. https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/c-w-post/
- Stuart, Nancy Rubin. “American Empress: The Life and Times of Marjorie Meriweather Post.” Villard. 1995.
- Stuart, Nancy Rubin. “Marjorie Merriweather Post: The Philanthropic Heiress Who Built Mar-a-Lago.” Saturday Evening Post. November 14, 2023. https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2023/11/marjorie-merriweather-post-the-philanthropic-heiress-who-built-mar-a-lago/
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Wilson.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
So Marjorie Merriweather Post came up in my research when
I was working on Clarence Bird'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 Mary 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
(00:39):
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 twentieth century, and she represents this
unique combination of a life that was led with incredible
opulence but also paired with a very serious, hands on
(01:00):
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,
(01:24):
and we'll talk about all.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
I will say, as I was reading through it, at
one point I got confused. I was like, wait, who
is she married?
Speaker 1 (01:30):
How many? And some of the husbands have the same
first name to make it extra confusing. We will talk
about all that today and certainly more in 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
(01:51):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
So to talk about about Marjorie, first, we need to
talk about her father. Charles William Post, who went by CW,
was born in Springfield, Illinois, on October twenty fourth, eighteen
fifty four. 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,
(02:22):
was a writer. 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 fifteen, 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
(02:43):
was twenty two, 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,
he did still want to own his own business, and
(03:05):
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 and the hope that that would help,
but then by eighteen ninety one, he was in Michigan
(03:28):
in John Harvey Kellogg's Sanitarium as his health was continuing
to decline. He had an array of symptoms digestive issues, insomnia,
and headaches, plus what's usually called nervous exhaustion. There's been
speculation over the years that he may have been grappling
with a condition like depression or an advanced anxiety disorder
(03:50):
that would not have been diagnosed that way at the time.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
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 helps through
prayer with Christian scientists, and he came to believe through
this group that healing was something that you could do
(04:15):
with your mind, and that became the basis of a
book that he wrote titled I Am Well.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
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 than I wouldn't be after many more years of
living in the world we live in. He was such
(04:43):
a believer in this serial based approach. To help 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 an amiable health problems all
around the globe. He used that rhetorical lot in his
(05:05):
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 eighteen ninety six. From there, he continued to
introduce a variety of cereal products, all of them intended
(05:27):
to improve consumer's health. This worked, Post became a millionaire,
and he was also accused on multiple occasions of stealing
recipes from Kellogg.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Yeah. He seemed to outrun those problems, though, because his
company just grew and grew. Uh CW's daughter, Marjorie Merriweather Post,
was born on March fifteenth, eighteen eighty seven, 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 Post and
(06:04):
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 Post's only child,
and she had been part of building the company with
her father, initially in small ways, like she worked alongside
him in jobs like labeling jars. But from an early
(06:25):
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
(06:47):
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.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
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 CW'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
(07:18):
be foolish and extravagant with her fortune. In September of
nineteen oh two, 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. But c W also
(07:39):
added considerable stress to Marjorie's life. In nineteen oh four,
just a few months after she had completed her studies
at Mount Vernon Seminary, CW divorced Marjorie's mother Ella, and
remarried less than two weeks later to his secretary Liah Young.
CW tried to force the bond between his daughter and
(08:02):
his new wife ahead of this marriage by making Lilah
Marjorie's travel companion. Marjorie, though, is said to have gotten
wind of this whole plan and was understandably furious.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
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. A year after
(08:36):
c W and Lila were married, Marjorie, who was nineteen
at the time, married attorney Edward Close on December fifth,
nineteen oh five, and as a wedding gift, CW built
the newly weds 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.
(08:59):
It was huge, huch, 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 CW
to stay in when he visited Close. Her new husband
was in his mid twenties and he was just starting
out on what would be a very successful law career
(09:19):
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. Two and a half
years into the marriage, Marjorie and Edward welcomed their first child,
(09:40):
a daughter named Adelaide, who was born on July twenty eighth,
nineteen oh eight. A second daughter, named Eleanor, was born
a year and a half after Adelaide, on December twelfth,
nineteen oh nine. For the next couple of years, Marjorie
was busy with her little girls and with a growing
art collection. But in the autumn of ninety teen twelve,
(10:00):
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 sixty two
year old mother. She believed that her mother had never
gotten over being just abruptly cast aside for another woman
(10:21):
after years of devotion and seeing her father through some
of the hardest times.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Of his life. Marjorie had to handle all of the
funeral arrangements herself.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
As Marjorie was grieving her mother, her father's health, which
had never been particularly robust, started to decline. In the
spring of nineteen fourteen, CW Post was moved from his
summer home in Santa Barbara, California, to Rochester, Minnesota, for
an apendectomy, and that move was because he believed only
(10:53):
the Mayo brothers were capable of handling the procedure, and
the hope was that this surgery was going to alleviate
so 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
(11:13):
he was healed enough, he returned to his California home,
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.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
On the morning of May ninth, 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
(11:46):
she was gone, although still in the house, CW Post
died by suicide from a gunshot wound. His doctor, J. C. Bainbridge,
ruled the tragedy the result of a quote fit of
temporary insanity. He was buried in Battlecreek, Michigan. Marjorie, as
we said, was CW's only child, and with his death
(12:07):
she became one of two inheritors to his fortune, which
was valued at twenty two million dollars, so that split
was something of a surprise. CW had split his estate
between Marjorie and her stepmother Lilah 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
(12:30):
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, were
able to track down a document from eighteen ninety five,
when Poston was founded, in which CW and his first
(12:51):
wife Ella had agreed that their only child would inherit
the majority of the company. So, with that paper in
hand and threatened litigation, this made Lila post to give
up her shares of Postum in exchange for a cash settlement.
Marjorie had inherited the serial company, and it fell entirely
to her to run the family business. She was twenty
(13:14):
seven and suddenly in charge of a twenty million dollar 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
(13:35):
the one to do that. Marjorie and Ed moved to
Battle Creek, where Postum was headquartered, to more effectively manage things. 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.
(13:57):
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 nineteen sixteen they also purchased
a home on Manhattan's Upper East Side and the home
on ninety Second Street would become an incredible example of
(14:20):
interior design as well as a place where an impressive
art collection would be displayed. Nineteen seventeen offered a lot
of challenges around the globe as World War One 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
(14:41):
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. After that,
(15:02):
Marjorie decided not to try to rebuild. She and Edward
sold the property to a school, and they made Manhattan
their East Coast home. 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.
(15:25):
Though her husband, ed and his brother were aboard the
SS Saratoga as it set sail from New York loaded
with supplies to 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
(15:48):
of the people aboard were successfully evacuated, but the hospital
supplies were all lost. Marjorie Post was still dedicated to
the mission, though, and she paid for a duplicate shipment
to be loaded a board the SS Finland. Eight days later,
The Finland made its way across the Atlantic just find
but it was attacked as it neared the French coast,
(16:08):
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 Savona. 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,
(16:31):
using her prominent social and business standing to fundraise for
the Red Cross. 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 nineteen seventeen. Her sense of the need for
women to have equal rights and more personal power continued
(16:52):
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.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
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.
(17:24):
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 in his ties to Christian science, and
she did not believe alcohol was part of that in
(17:44):
any way the same way her father did. 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 an habitual drinker, and stated throughout the years that
Ed was also not an especially heavy drinker, it just
(18:05):
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 nineteen nineteen, they
(18:28):
were divorced.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Despite having found a lot of satisfaction in her independence,
Marjorie soon got married again. On July seventh, nineteen twenty,
she married Edward Francis Hutton. The two of them ran
in the same social circles for years. She'd initially met
the stockbroker in nineteen seventeen at a party, but they
were both married at the time. There didn't seem to
(18:51):
be any kind of romantic aspect to this interaction, but
then in nineteen nineteen 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 ef,
(19:13):
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
post them and to offer advice as a board member
that came from a vast and sound knowledge. Marjorie also
asked her friend Colby Chester to become the assistant treasurer
(19:36):
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,
(19:59):
who was a long time family friend who 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 the rapidly changing post war business landscape. So as
(20:20):
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, Ef
Hutton became chairman of the board. Marjorie was taking.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
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 post them a little bit, and with Ef and
Colby in place, she felt really confident that she could
do so. It was thanks to EF's acumen with that
the company was able to go public. On December twenty ninth,
(21:04):
nineteen twenty three, Marjorie welcomed her third child, a daughter
named Nadinia.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
She had been hoping for a boy. EF'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
(21:31):
getting older, Nadinia's birth would be her last one. Her
name was a nod to her father's nickname, which is ned.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Although she went by apparently Deani or Dina throughout her life.
Following Nadinia'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
(22:04):
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 as construction was underway. They
(22:24):
also moved Postum's headquarters from Michigan to New York.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
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 stuffuness in history class. Going from the
(22:52):
time Marjorie and E. F. Hutton got married, they started
expanding their real estate holdings together. They bought a summer
home in the at Irondacks in nineteen twenty one, and
then in the mid nineteen twenties they broke ground on
a new estate in Palm Beach, Florida. They hired an
architect and designer from Vienna named Joseph Urbain for the project.
(23:12):
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 Broadways Zigfield 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,
(23:33):
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
(23:54):
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 one hundred
and fifteen room mansion that Marjorie named using a Latin
(24:18):
phrase that meant from sea to lake to describe this
property's position on the coast. Another architect, Marie and Wyeth,
had been involved in the project in the beginning before
Marjorie moved on to Urban, but Wyath was brought back
on to oversee a lot of the practical needs of
the construction. Construction totaled at about two point five million
(24:39):
dollars by the time it was finished in nineteen twenty seven.
The original budget had been one million dollars. One of
the legacies of the construction process for mari Lago that
would define marjorie Posts image in Palm Beach and beyond
was her recognition that people with money should help others
whenever possible. Nineteen twenty six, there had been a bust
(25:02):
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.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
Looked like Palm Beach might implode, there was a concern
that maybe Marjorie should not be pouring so much money
into marri Lago, but she felt very strongly that she
could not halt construction because she didn't want to put
more people out of work. As we mentioned in our
episode on Clarence Bird's Eye, in nineteen twenty nine, Marjorie
Posts saw to the purchase of Bird's Eye's Frozen Food company,
(25:38):
its machinery, and all of its patents. The business industry
saw this as a wild and foolhardy move. Bird's Eye's
entire company had been valued at less than two million dollars,
and Post bought it for twenty three point five million dollars.
But she had done her due diligence and had inspected
the company and reviewed its financial situation and come to
(26:01):
the conclusion that it was really ahead of its time
and that Bird's Eye had created a process that made
frozen food a viable market. Post Them became general foods
not long after the purchase, as Marjorie envisioned a wider
range of offerings for Postum to move it forward. As
the twentieth century continued, Marjorie Post herself changed significantly in
(26:24):
the nineteen thirties. 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
(26:45):
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, and the rules about who
(27:06):
could get their food from these canteens loosened. More canteens
were opened around the city as the depression more on.
Marjorie also donated to and established many other charitable organizations
throughout the nineteen thirties, 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.
(27:27):
She went to the canteens and workshifts, 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 twenties and thirties.
She was known to buy a lot of things and
give lavish parties, and this was something that her first
(27:49):
two husbands often cited as causing some friction. But in
her forties, 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,
(28:11):
but she really was an amazing collector of art, jewelry, antique, sculpture, everything.
She saw this all as an investment in a way
that she could safeguard important works for future generations to enjoy.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Although Marjorie and E. F. Hutton had for a long
time been true partners in business as well as in life.
Their marriage soured over time. Some accounts say that the
decisions Marjorie made in the late nineteen twenties, so opting
to spend money when a lot of other people were
choosing to save it, had caused some tension between her
(28:45):
and Hutton. 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
until he was at the pier bidding her adieu on
a trip to Europe that he was supposed to be
(29:06):
joining her on later. Right before the departure, she told
him she knew everything and that she was divorcing him.
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 seventh, nineteen thirty five, they
were officially divorced. Ef resigned from his role at General
(29:28):
Foods three months later, and then after that Marjorie filed
for sole custody of their daughter and got it. Although
Post was described as deeply distraught at finding out that
ef 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
(29:50):
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
(30:12):
divorce ranch in Reno to wait out the required time
for her to declare residency and attain a divorce there.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Four days after E. F. Hutton resigned at General Foods,
Marjorie and Joe were married. 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 nineteen thirty six, she
(30:41):
became a member of the board of directors in her
own right. Six months later, Joe was appointed as the
US Ambassador to the USSR, the second person to hold
that post, so in early nineteen thirty seven, the couple
moved to Moscow. Marjorie's formal dinners at the ambassadorial residence
as Spasso House, were a vital part of the relationship
(31:03):
that Joe was able to develop with his Soviet counterparts.
The couple worked together in Moscow for two years before
Joe got a new assignment in Brussels in nineteen thirty eight.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
In nineteen thirty nine, 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
(31:37):
were a Washington d c 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
nineteen forty five, Joe was given the Order of Lenin
by the Supreme Soviet yeah mission to Moscow was even
(32:00):
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 Posts and Davy's 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
(32:24):
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
nineteen fifty and at that point she felt she couldn't
leave him. His treatment was successful, but for a while
(32:45):
it seemed like she was just going to stick it out,
until she discovered that in a state 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
(33:07):
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
twenty years together, and this time Marjorie went to a
divorce ranch in Idaho to speed the end of the marriage.
Along Over her lifetime, post was honored with a lot
(33:29):
of awards for her charitable work. In nineteen fifty seven,
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 One hospital, as well as
money she raised to fund a nineteen fifty five Marie
Antoinette exhibition at the Palace of Versailles.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
In December nineteen fifty four, before her divorce from Davies,
Marjorie purchased a property in Washington, d c. 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,
(34:14):
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 quote about what she wished
(34:34):
for the estate on its website quote, I want young
Americans to see how someone lived in the twentieth 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
(34:56):
with id quote to seek respite and rejuvenation. When Marjorie
turned seventy one hundred and eighty, one 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 posts many philanthropic efforts. One of these
(35:19):
contributors was a widower and businessman who had worked at
Westinghouse named Herbert A.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
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 nineteen fifty eight. They had two wedding receptions,
one in d C. And one in herb's hometown of Pittsburgh.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
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 so of the creation of a national cultural center
in Washington, d C. That was what would eventually become
(36:06):
known as the Kennedy Center, and she volunteered her time
working on that project once it had been approved by Congress.
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,
(36:29):
hiring people to formally catalog all of the art and
antiques she had there. Yeah, she had made some previous
efforts at getting her stuff cataloged, but they always seemed
to end before they were completed, so that was really
the first one that was intensive. In nineteen sixty four,
Post's marriage was engulfed in scandal when photos emerged of
(36:51):
her husband Herb, in sexual situations with young men. While
members of her family had long suspected that Herb might
be a clauseited 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
(37:12):
he also had health problems in the immediate aftermath of
the truth coming out. 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
(37:35):
in August of that year. 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. For Hillwood,
she hoped it would become part of the Smithsonian's collection,
and for mar A Lago, she envisioned it as a
(37:58):
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.
As an octagenarian, Posts slowly lost her hearing. She had
other health issues which she never publicly disclosed. She also
(38:23):
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 nineteen seventy three, but then
she surprised her entire family by recovering, but her personality
(38:45):
had changed after that. She was no longer the amiable,
positive person she had been for more than eighty years,
and then that summer her health once again declined, and
she died of heart failure on September twelfth, nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
So 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 Meriweather Foundation after concerns,
but 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. Yeah,
(39:24):
Apparently the Smithsonian drafted up a usage plan that included, like,
we could use this formal dining room for like 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 their having parties,
So that was not going to work out. They were
(39:45):
not on the same page. Marri 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 because it sits right
underneath a frequently used flight path out of West Palm Beach. Additionally,
(40:06):
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 ten million dollars. He immediately
complained that it was too expensive to maintain because of
(40:26):
property taxes, and actually tried to subdivide the property and
sell it, but Palm Beach blocked that plan. The many
philanthropic works of Marjorie Meriweather 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,
(40:50):
make it work, make it create, make it do good,
and make it help in many hundreds of ways.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
I feel like I want to get that like done
in calligraphy and frame 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. This is from
our listener Mary. This is actually partially about an episode
that Tracy did the research on, but then talks about
(41:18):
a thing I said, and I want to make sure
I'm clear on what I was getting at so Mary writes,
good afternoon to me, 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
(41:40):
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 Cotex pads
that I needed and buy two to three boxes at
a time. 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
(42:01):
I could have given her the option of the belts.
Side quest, Holly mentioned a fellow podcaster person who is
trying to distill hatch green chili booze.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
This made me.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
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 thatched chili's. I just didn't want there to
be any confusion and for someone to be like Annie,
(42:31):
how's that boos coming? And Annie go, I don't know
what you're talking about. Uh, that's all for pet tax.
Dante is the fluffy, fourteen year old diabetic wonder cat,
and Lynne 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. Ps. Yes,
(42:53):
the thing next to them is a Halloween tree. Take
care listen. I love a Halloween tree. I fully understand
having a pet that loves an other pet and that
pet doesn't want to receive that love. We're in the
midst of a big thing with that right now, and
I just I love all of this, and those kiddies
are cute as kN be, so thank you. Thank you
for sending this this email. If you would like to
(43:13):
email us, you can do so at History Podcast at
iHeartRadio dot com. You can also subscribe to the show
on the iHeartRadio app, or anywhere you listen to your
favorite shows.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
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.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Wilson.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
So Marjorie Merriweather Post came up in my research when
I was working on Clarence Bird'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 Mary 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
(00:39):
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 twentieth century, and she represents this
unique combination of a life that was led with incredible
opulence but also paired with a very serious, hands on
(01:00):
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,
(01:24):
and we'll talk about all.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
I will say, as I was reading through it, at
one point I got confused. I was like, wait, who
is she married?
Speaker 1 (01:30):
How many? And some of the husbands have the same
first name to make it extra confusing. We will talk
about all that today and certainly more in 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
(01:51):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
So to talk about about Marjorie, first, we need to
talk about her father. Charles William Post, who went by CW,
was born in Springfield, Illinois, on October twenty fourth, eighteen
fifty four. 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,
(02:22):
was a writer. 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 fifteen, 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
(02:43):
was twenty two, 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,
he did still want to own his own business, and
(03:05):
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 and the hope that that would help,
but then by eighteen ninety one, he was in Michigan
(03:28):
in John Harvey Kellogg's Sanitarium as his health was continuing
to decline. He had an array of symptoms digestive issues, insomnia,
and headaches, plus what's usually called nervous exhaustion. There's been
speculation over the years that he may have been grappling
with a condition like depression or an advanced anxiety disorder
(03:50):
that would not have been diagnosed that way at the time.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
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 helps through
prayer with Christian scientists, and he came to believe through
this group that healing was something that you could do
(04:15):
with your mind, and that became the basis of a
book that he wrote titled I Am Well.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
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 than I wouldn't be after many more years of
living in the world we live in. He was such
(04:43):
a believer in this serial based approach. To help 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 an amiable health problems all
around the globe. He used that rhetorical lot in his
(05:05):
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 eighteen ninety six. From there, he continued to
introduce a variety of cereal products, all of them intended
(05:27):
to improve consumer's health. This worked, Post became a millionaire,
and he was also accused on multiple occasions of stealing
recipes from Kellogg.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Yeah. He seemed to outrun those problems, though, because his
company just grew and grew. Uh CW's daughter, Marjorie Merriweather Post,
was born on March fifteenth, eighteen eighty seven, 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 Post and
(06:04):
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 Post's only child,
and she had been part of building the company with
her father, initially in small ways, like she worked alongside
him in jobs like labeling jars. But from an early
(06:25):
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
(06:47):
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.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
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 CW'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
(07:18):
be foolish and extravagant with her fortune. In September of
nineteen oh two, 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. But c W also
(07:39):
added considerable stress to Marjorie's life. In nineteen oh four,
just a few months after she had completed her studies
at Mount Vernon Seminary, CW divorced Marjorie's mother Ella, and
remarried less than two weeks later to his secretary Liah Young.
CW tried to force the bond between his daughter and
(08:02):
his new wife ahead of this marriage by making Lilah
Marjorie's travel companion. Marjorie, though, is said to have gotten
wind of this whole plan and was understandably furious.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
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. A year after
(08:36):
c W and Lila were married, Marjorie, who was nineteen
at the time, married attorney Edward Close on December fifth,
nineteen oh five, and as a wedding gift, CW built
the newly weds 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.
(08:59):
It was huge, huch, 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 CW
to stay in when he visited Close. Her new husband
was in his mid twenties and he was just starting
out on what would be a very successful law career
(09:19):
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. Two and a half
years into the marriage, Marjorie and Edward welcomed their first child,
(09:40):
a daughter named Adelaide, who was born on July twenty eighth,
nineteen oh eight. A second daughter, named Eleanor, was born
a year and a half after Adelaide, on December twelfth,
nineteen oh nine. For the next couple of years, Marjorie
was busy with her little girls and with a growing
art collection. But in the autumn of ninety teen twelve,
(10:00):
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 sixty two
year old mother. She believed that her mother had never
gotten over being just abruptly cast aside for another woman
(10:21):
after years of devotion and seeing her father through some
of the hardest times.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Of his life. Marjorie had to handle all of the
funeral arrangements herself.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
As Marjorie was grieving her mother, her father's health, which
had never been particularly robust, started to decline. In the
spring of nineteen fourteen, CW Post was moved from his
summer home in Santa Barbara, California, to Rochester, Minnesota, for
an apendectomy, and that move was because he believed only
(10:53):
the Mayo brothers were capable of handling the procedure, and
the hope was that this surgery was going to alleviate
so 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
(11:13):
he was healed enough, he returned to his California home,
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.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
On the morning of May ninth, 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
(11:46):
she was gone, although still in the house, CW Post
died by suicide from a gunshot wound. His doctor, J. C. Bainbridge,
ruled the tragedy the result of a quote fit of
temporary insanity. He was buried in Battlecreek, Michigan. Marjorie, as
we said, was CW's only child, and with his death
(12:07):
she became one of two inheritors to his fortune, which
was valued at twenty two million dollars, so that split
was something of a surprise. CW had split his estate
between Marjorie and her stepmother Lilah 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
(12:30):
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, were
able to track down a document from eighteen ninety five,
when Poston was founded, in which CW and his first
(12:51):
wife Ella had agreed that their only child would inherit
the majority of the company. So, with that paper in
hand and threatened litigation, this made Lila post to give
up her shares of Postum in exchange for a cash settlement.
Marjorie had inherited the serial company, and it fell entirely
to her to run the family business. She was twenty
(13:14):
seven and suddenly in charge of a twenty million dollar 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
(13:35):
the one to do that. Marjorie and Ed moved to
Battle Creek, where Postum was headquartered, to more effectively manage things. 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.
(13:57):
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 nineteen sixteen they also purchased
a home on Manhattan's Upper East Side and the home
on ninety Second Street would become an incredible example of
(14:20):
interior design as well as a place where an impressive
art collection would be displayed. Nineteen seventeen offered a lot
of challenges around the globe as World War One 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
(14:41):
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. After that,
(15:02):
Marjorie decided not to try to rebuild. She and Edward
sold the property to a school, and they made Manhattan
their East Coast home. 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.
(15:25):
Though her husband, ed and his brother were aboard the
SS Saratoga as it set sail from New York loaded
with supplies to 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
(15:48):
of the people aboard were successfully evacuated, but the hospital
supplies were all lost. Marjorie Post was still dedicated to
the mission, though, and she paid for a duplicate shipment
to be loaded a board the SS Finland. Eight days later,
The Finland made its way across the Atlantic just find
but it was attacked as it neared the French coast,
(16:08):
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 Savona. 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,
(16:31):
using her prominent social and business standing to fundraise for
the Red Cross. 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 nineteen seventeen. Her sense of the need for
women to have equal rights and more personal power continued
(16:52):
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.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
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.
(17:24):
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 in his ties to Christian science, and
she did not believe alcohol was part of that in
(17:44):
any way the same way her father did. 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 an habitual drinker, and stated throughout the years that
Ed was also not an especially heavy drinker, it just
(18:05):
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 nineteen nineteen, they
(18:28):
were divorced.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Despite having found a lot of satisfaction in her independence,
Marjorie soon got married again. On July seventh, nineteen twenty,
she married Edward Francis Hutton. The two of them ran
in the same social circles for years. She'd initially met
the stockbroker in nineteen seventeen at a party, but they
were both married at the time. There didn't seem to
(18:51):
be any kind of romantic aspect to this interaction, but
then in nineteen nineteen 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 ef,
(19:13):
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
post them and to offer advice as a board member
that came from a vast and sound knowledge. Marjorie also
asked her friend Colby Chester to become the assistant treasurer
(19:36):
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,
(19:59):
who was a long time family friend who 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 the rapidly changing post war business landscape. So as
(20:20):
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, Ef
Hutton became chairman of the board. Marjorie was taking.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
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 post them a little bit, and with Ef and
Colby in place, she felt really confident that she could
do so. It was thanks to EF's acumen with that
the company was able to go public. On December twenty ninth,
(21:04):
nineteen twenty three, Marjorie welcomed her third child, a daughter
named Nadinia.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
She had been hoping for a boy. EF'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
(21:31):
getting older, Nadinia's birth would be her last one. Her
name was a nod to her father's nickname, which is ned.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Although she went by apparently Deani or Dina throughout her life.
Following Nadinia'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
(22:04):
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 as construction was underway. They
(22:24):
also moved Postum's headquarters from Michigan to New York.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
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 stuffuness in history class. Going from the
(22:52):
time Marjorie and E. F. Hutton got married, they started
expanding their real estate holdings together. They bought a summer
home in the at Irondacks in nineteen twenty one, and
then in the mid nineteen twenties they broke ground on
a new estate in Palm Beach, Florida. They hired an
architect and designer from Vienna named Joseph Urbain for the project.
(23:12):
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 Broadways Zigfield 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,
(23:33):
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
(23:54):
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 one hundred
and fifteen room mansion that Marjorie named using a Latin
(24:18):
phrase that meant from sea to lake to describe this
property's position on the coast. Another architect, Marie and Wyeth,
had been involved in the project in the beginning before
Marjorie moved on to Urban, but Wyath was brought back
on to oversee a lot of the practical needs of
the construction. Construction totaled at about two point five million
(24:39):
dollars by the time it was finished in nineteen twenty seven.
The original budget had been one million dollars. One of
the legacies of the construction process for mari Lago that
would define marjorie Posts image in Palm Beach and beyond
was her recognition that people with money should help others
whenever possible. Nineteen twenty six, there had been a bust
(25:02):
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.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
Looked like Palm Beach might implode, there was a concern
that maybe Marjorie should not be pouring so much money
into marri Lago, but she felt very strongly that she
could not halt construction because she didn't want to put
more people out of work. As we mentioned in our
episode on Clarence Bird's Eye, in nineteen twenty nine, Marjorie
Posts saw to the purchase of Bird's Eye's Frozen Food company,
(25:38):
its machinery, and all of its patents. The business industry
saw this as a wild and foolhardy move. Bird's Eye's
entire company had been valued at less than two million dollars,
and Post bought it for twenty three point five million dollars.
But she had done her due diligence and had inspected
the company and reviewed its financial situation and come to
(26:01):
the conclusion that it was really ahead of its time
and that Bird's Eye had created a process that made
frozen food a viable market. Post Them became general foods
not long after the purchase, as Marjorie envisioned a wider
range of offerings for Postum to move it forward. As
the twentieth century continued, Marjorie Post herself changed significantly in
(26:24):
the nineteen thirties. 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
(26:45):
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, and the rules about who
(27:06):
could get their food from these canteens loosened. More canteens
were opened around the city as the depression more on.
Marjorie also donated to and established many other charitable organizations
throughout the nineteen thirties, 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.
(27:27):
She went to the canteens and workshifts, 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 twenties and thirties.
She was known to buy a lot of things and
give lavish parties, and this was something that her first
(27:49):
two husbands often cited as causing some friction. But in
her forties, 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,
(28:11):
but she really was an amazing collector of art, jewelry, antique, sculpture, everything.
She saw this all as an investment in a way
that she could safeguard important works for future generations to enjoy.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Although Marjorie and E. F. Hutton had for a long
time been true partners in business as well as in life.
Their marriage soured over time. Some accounts say that the
decisions Marjorie made in the late nineteen twenties, so opting
to spend money when a lot of other people were
choosing to save it, had caused some tension between her
(28:45):
and Hutton. 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
until he was at the pier bidding her adieu on
a trip to Europe that he was supposed to be
(29:06):
joining her on later. Right before the departure, she told
him she knew everything and that she was divorcing him.
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 seventh, nineteen thirty five, they
were officially divorced. Ef resigned from his role at General
(29:28):
Foods three months later, and then after that Marjorie filed
for sole custody of their daughter and got it. Although
Post was described as deeply distraught at finding out that
ef 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
(29:50):
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
(30:12):
divorce ranch in Reno to wait out the required time
for her to declare residency and attain a divorce there.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Four days after E. F. Hutton resigned at General Foods,
Marjorie and Joe were married. 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 nineteen thirty six, she
(30:41):
became a member of the board of directors in her
own right. Six months later, Joe was appointed as the
US Ambassador to the USSR, the second person to hold
that post, so in early nineteen thirty seven, the couple
moved to Moscow. Marjorie's formal dinners at the ambassadorial residence
as Spasso House, were a vital part of the relationship
(31:03):
that Joe was able to develop with his Soviet counterparts.
The couple worked together in Moscow for two years before
Joe got a new assignment in Brussels in nineteen thirty eight.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
In nineteen thirty nine, 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
(31:37):
were a Washington d c 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
nineteen forty five, Joe was given the Order of Lenin
by the Supreme Soviet yeah mission to Moscow was even
(32:00):
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 Posts and Davy's 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
(32:24):
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
nineteen fifty and at that point she felt she couldn't
leave him. His treatment was successful, but for a while
(32:45):
it seemed like she was just going to stick it out,
until she discovered that in a state 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
(33:07):
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
twenty years together, and this time Marjorie went to a
divorce ranch in Idaho to speed the end of the marriage.
Along Over her lifetime, post was honored with a lot
(33:29):
of awards for her charitable work. In nineteen fifty seven,
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 One hospital, as well as
money she raised to fund a nineteen fifty five Marie
Antoinette exhibition at the Palace of Versailles.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
In December nineteen fifty four, before her divorce from Davies,
Marjorie purchased a property in Washington, d c. 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,
(34:14):
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 quote about what she wished
(34:34):
for the estate on its website quote, I want young
Americans to see how someone lived in the twentieth 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
(34:56):
with id quote to seek respite and rejuvenation. When Marjorie
turned seventy one hundred and eighty, one 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 posts many philanthropic efforts. One of these
(35:19):
contributors was a widower and businessman who had worked at
Westinghouse named Herbert A.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
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 nineteen fifty eight. They had two wedding receptions,
one in d C. And one in herb's hometown of Pittsburgh.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
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 so of the creation of a national cultural center
in Washington, d C. That was what would eventually become
(36:06):
known as the Kennedy Center, and she volunteered her time
working on that project once it had been approved by Congress.
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,
(36:29):
hiring people to formally catalog all of the art and
antiques she had there. Yeah, she had made some previous
efforts at getting her stuff cataloged, but they always seemed
to end before they were completed, so that was really
the first one that was intensive. In nineteen sixty four,
Post's marriage was engulfed in scandal when photos emerged of
(36:51):
her husband Herb, in sexual situations with young men. While
members of her family had long suspected that Herb might
be a clauseited 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
(37:12):
he also had health problems in the immediate aftermath of
the truth coming out. 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
(37:35):
in August of that year. 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. For Hillwood,
she hoped it would become part of the Smithsonian's collection,
and for mar A Lago, she envisioned it as a
(37:58):
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.
As an octagenarian, Posts slowly lost her hearing. She had
other health issues which she never publicly disclosed. She also
(38:23):
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 nineteen seventy three, but then
she surprised her entire family by recovering, but her personality
(38:45):
had changed after that. She was no longer the amiable,
positive person she had been for more than eighty years,
and then that summer her health once again declined, and
she died of heart failure on September twelfth, nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
So 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 Meriweather Foundation after concerns,
but 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. Yeah,
(39:24):
Apparently the Smithsonian drafted up a usage plan that included, like,
we could use this formal dining room for like 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 their having parties,
So that was not going to work out. They were
(39:45):
not on the same page. Marri 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 because it sits right
underneath a frequently used flight path out of West Palm Beach. Additionally,
(40:06):
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 ten million dollars. He immediately
complained that it was too expensive to maintain because of
(40:26):
property taxes, and actually tried to subdivide the property and
sell it, but Palm Beach blocked that plan. The many
philanthropic works of Marjorie Meriweather 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,
(40:50):
make it work, make it create, make it do good,
and make it help in many hundreds of ways.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
I feel like I want to get that like done
in calligraphy and frame 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. This is from
our listener Mary. This is actually partially about an episode
that Tracy did the research on, but then talks about
(41:18):
a thing I said, and I want to make sure
I'm clear on what I was getting at so Mary writes,
good afternoon to me, 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
(41:40):
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 Cotex pads
that I needed and buy two to three boxes at
a time. 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
(42:01):
I could have given her the option of the belts.
Side quest, Holly mentioned a fellow podcaster person who is
trying to distill hatch green chili booze.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
This made me.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
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 thatched chili's. I just didn't want there to
be any confusion and for someone to be like Annie,
(42:31):
how's that boos coming? And Annie go, I don't know
what you're talking about. Uh, that's all for pet tax.
Dante is the fluffy, fourteen year old diabetic wonder cat,
and Lynne 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. Ps. Yes,
(42:53):
the thing next to them is a Halloween tree. Take
care listen. I love a Halloween tree. I fully understand
having a pet that loves an other pet and that
pet doesn't want to receive that love. We're in the
midst of a big thing with that right now, and
I just I love all of this, and those kiddies
are cute as kN be, so thank you. Thank you
for sending this this email. If you would like to
(43:13):
email us, you can do so at History Podcast at
iHeartRadio dot com. You can also subscribe to the show
on the iHeartRadio app, or anywhere you listen to your
favorite shows.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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Tracy Wilson
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