Ripley: The Tale of Amelie Welles Pumpelly, Part 1

Raphael, Amelie, and Ripley Pumpelly

This is not a complete story - nor does it even begin to touch on what I suspect was a fascinating and non-conforming life, but I wanted to get it started before I forget many of the details. I would love to hear from one of her surviving children - I understand there is at least one daughter still around.

UPDATE: Thanks to the kindness of Amelie and John Henry Bates' daughter, Grace Ann, for clarifications to this piece.

RIPLEY > William > RIPLEY, John > RIPLEY, Joshua > RIPLEY, Joshua II > RIPLEY, Joshua > RIPLEY, Nathaniel > RIPLEY, William Young > RIPLEY, Edward "Ned" Hastings, BG > RIPLEY, Amelie "Sybil" Huntington m. PUMPELLY, Raphael Welles >  PUMPELLY, Amelie Welles

William Young Ripley, of Rutland, Vermont, was a major player. He owned a huge marble business and had interests in numerous business ventures including banking. He had a slew of highly successful children, who in addition to having their own skills and talents, also had the money behind the Ripley name to clear their path in life. WY Ripley's youngest son, Ned, was described by one source as far more whimsical than his serious brother William, but he too was successful. During the Civil War, he quickly rose through the ranks, becoming a Brigadier General and making a mark quite impressive.

After the war, he returned to Rutland to assist in the operation of the marble quarry business, but his father died and it was eventually sold. Ned moved to NYC, still unmarried, though quite eligible and handsome. He moved among the highest echelons of New York society and finally married Amelie Dyckman Van Doren, a member of an old and wealthy Dutch-American family at the ripe old age of 39.

Raphael II & father Raphael Pumpelly

Ned spent the next decades in major building and construction projects and founded a US-Brazil steamship line and traveled frequently to South America. Some of these projects flopped and some were successful, but it helped his wife's family was able to back some of his ventures. In some quarters, it was suspected that he did not always act in good faith.

His family - his wife "Minnie" (they did like their nicknames), and daughters, Alice "Ahlo" and Amelie "Sibyl" lived the good life in Manhattan all through Ned's financial ups and downs. One of the things he inherited from his father, was the family farm in Mendon, a bit east of Rutland along the Woodstock highway. It was there he also built cottages for his daughters to entertain and practice keeping house. They would use this farm as a getaway spot during their lives and it would play a role in his granddaughter Amelie's life as well.

His daughters, Ahlo and Sibyl, managed to get engaged about the same time and had a grand, Manhattan double wedding. Ahlo's groom was Alexander Ogden Jones, son of Mahlon Ogden Jones and Vera de Trofimoff, the Princess de Trofimoff of Russia. Alexander was an artist, farmer, and held a Ph. B from Yale and resided at 74 Park Ave. After their marriage, in 1920, he purchased the orchard and vineyard and pecan groves at Niagara, in Pinehurst, North Carolina, in the Sandhills, where they spent part of their time each year.

Sibyl's choice in spouse also had a lot of cachet. Raphael Pumpelly II was the son of Professor Raphael Pumpelly and Eliza Frances Shepard. Professor Pumpelly was a noted geologist who graduated in 1859 from the Royal School of Mines in Freiburg, Germany. He began his career in directing Arizona silver mine operations and worked as a consultant for the government of Japan. He spent much of his life traveling the world, working for various governments and business entities on various mining issues. He became the first Professor of Mining at Harvard. They resided in Newport when in country.

Samarkand farm

Raphael Wells Pumpelly finished three years at Harvard prior to traveling with his father on an archaeological expedition to Central Asia in Samarcand.  He was of a quite handsome and striking stature. As a child, he had traveled extensively in Europe and Asia with his father.  After his marriage, they also purchased land in the Sandhills, like brother-in-law Ogden Jones, and he hoped to settle down to life as a gentleman farmer after his marriage. He partnered with an old Harvard chum to buy 500 acres near Eagle Springs in 1910 and he later bought his chum out of his share. By 1913, the couple had three children, Amelie, the purpose of this story, born in 1910, Raphael Ripley Pumpelly (1911-2006), and Ripley Huntington Pumpelly (1913-1967). Raphael lived it up big, even in the Sandhills of Eagle Spring, North Carolina, building a beautiful mansion he named Samarkand manor (named for the country he visited as a boy which so intrigued him).  This account of the divorce proceedings stated:

"However, years of lavishness sapped the farm’s entire earnings. By 1918, two years of failed peach crops, coupled with the collapse of both the peach and real estate markets crippled the Pumpellys financially, driving them deeper into debt. Samarkand Manor, a correctional facility for troubled women, was erected on 300 acres of land sold by Pumpelly to the state that year.

Life at home proved not so peachy. The Pumpelly divorce, described as a “carnival of sensationalism,” provided nearly as much entertainment as the parties. Curious neighbors heard Amelie’s sworn accounts of the “torrid affair” with his children's tutor. Pumpelly submitted this sad account to a Harvard alumni publication 25 years after graduating: “My wife is gone, my house is empty, my property ransacked, and I have endured two years’ war with my most intimate friend and former partner.” Pumpelly, accompanied by his three children, moved in 1925 into a cave he and Page constructed 20 years earlier on Mount Monadnock in New Hampshire. They survived by gathering fruits and nuts and trapping small game.

Pumpelly, after bathing in the stream and donning his suit, caught the train to New York City where he applied for work. After a year in the cave, he found employment as a stockbroker, soon became the third highest producer in the nation and made a second fortune. Years later, his children remembered that wild year as the best of their young lives. The Samarcand property eventually passed to J.D. Parker, a wine maker and dairy farmer. He and his family occupied the space until his incarceration for tax evasion in 1955."

The Pilot, LLC, 2013  

The divorce itself was not actually finalized until 1942 in Dade County, Florida - how that happened, I will probably never figure out.

Name: Amelia R Pumpelly

Gender: Female

Spouse's Name: Raphael W Pumpelly

Divorce Date: 1942

Divorce Place: Dade, Florida, USA

Certificate Number: 9803

Perhaps it was her time living in the cave that gave young Amelie a different perspective on life that would guide her through the rest of her life. For whatever reason, she took a vastly different path, which I'll cover next in Ripley: The Tale of Amelie Ripley, Part 2.

Sideroads: Charming Charley Ripley

Charles Henry Ripley, 1866

The clan of William Young Ripley was not only tight-knit, but incredibly interesting from a historical perspective. Two were Generals in the Civil War, two were lost at sea (different seas, different years), one would marry and her daughter would marry a General, and one was the adoptive mother of the first woman Chiropractor in Vermont (License #1, issued in 1909). I could go on about the rest of the twigs and branches of this family tree, and hope to share a few of the more interesting.

Charles Henry Ripley was the youngest son of William Young Ripley of Rutland, Vermont and his second wife, Jane Betsey Warren - learn more here

In summary from"With Pen or Sword: Lives and times of the remarkable Rutland Ripleys," by Robert G Steele:

He was a poor student. He was still in school when the war broke out, and was with difficulty restrained by the family from immediately following his brothers into the service. When in the second year of the war, Mr Lincoln issued his call for additional volunteers, the spirited youngster could no longer be kept on a leash. Unlike his brothers, he cared nothing for officer status and the implications of responsibility it carried. Charley signed up for nine months as a private soldier. His first act on receiving his enlistment bounty was to come home and pay, as far as the money went, the debts he had managed to run up in two years of idleness. This gesture prompted his brother William to express the pious hope he would return safely after his service, "free from bad habits."

In October, 1862, not long after William's  return from the battlefields, the younger brother went off to join his regiment, the Twelfth Vermont Infantry. His sister Agnes came home from school to see him off. If Charley Ripley's army career is remarkable for anything, it is for the fact that it did not include any fighting whatsoever. On the way south he had time to do some sightseeing in Washington before his unit was ordered into camp across the river in Virginia. There he was assigned to guard and picket duty at various locations, and to work on the construction of barracks and shelters for troops. In his letters home, his main concerns were getting food sent to him and to keep awake on guard duty, in that order. From Wolf Run Shoals he wrote his sister Mary, "Please send me ten or twleve pounds of butter (put up in a sound wooden box), fifteen or twenty pounds of good strong cheese, two or three gallons of thick maple syrup, a few (say at least a half dozen) mince pies, a few sweet pickled cucumbers or citron or anything else you can get without any trouble. You may think that I have sent for a good deal, but even that amount will not last long down here. The rest of the boys get more boxes from home than I do, and we always share. Button has had as much as 20 pounds of butter and forty pounds of cheese."

Tiring of guard duty, Charley dreamed of the luxury of being an officer, or even a noncom. Edward,  himself a paroled war prisoner at the time, saw a sergeancy opening up in his own regiment and tried vainly to have Charley transferred. 

At the end of his enlistment, he came back home and was mustered out of service 14 Jul 1863. He had earned corporal's chevrons.

Perhaps here is the place to record that for Charley Ripley, the pursuit of happiness was often enhanced by the imbibing of alcoholic spirits Despite the total abstention of their parents, all three of the Ripley boys drank on occasion, but only Charley had difficulty putting on the brakes. 

Charley worked briefly int he office of the marble works, but his heart was not in it. For all his waywardness, Charley was endowed with a special kind of innocent charm which not only attracted strangers to him but also roused the protective instincts of his siblings.
Since no job suited him in Rutland, his parents invented one hoping to keep his adventurous spirit and incurable wanderlust in check. They sent him off to the Wild West of his dreams for the ostensible purpose of investigating the mining possibilities in the Montana territory. In the Spring of 1866, with is mother's bible in is pocket, and gold coins in his moneybelt, with promises to be good, to stay sober and tent strictly to business, Charley Ripley left on his long trip, eager for any adventure.

The story of his trip west can be read starting on page 288 of Pen and Sword. After many months, he returned when his money and credit ran low.

In 1870, he, with his mother's blessing headed West to The Colorado Territory with Henry Strong as his assistant and John Gilliland. He purchased 40 acres of virgin land Las Animas. The ranch took shape over many months. It was hard going and he had to rely on his brothers for financial assistance and for improvements to the ranch. By 1877, he was able to ship steers to market in Kansas City because the trains had arrived. But in 1878 and 1879 Charley experienced a series of losses that would devastate him both emotionally and financially. His days as rancher were coming to an end. He returned to Rutland to determine what would be next.

Eight Modern Views of Famous Places in Tokyo of Great Japan (Dai Nippon Tokyo kaika meisho hakkei no zu), 1875

He boarded a tramp steamer referred to as "Kate" bound for New York with a cargo for Yokohama, Japan.  He was its sole passenger. It made its way around Cape Horn and across the oceans. He arrive in the land of the Empire of the Rising Sun in the spring of 1879 and fell in love. Tokyo had a small colony of Americans and Europeans. He took up residence in a hotel that many of them stayed in. From his home base in Tokyo, but without the slightest intention of keeping to the limits of the cities to which he was restricted by law, Charley set out to explore the interior. Dressed in native garb, he climbed mountains, swam in the lakes, sought out the byways, wandering at will throughout the land. Enemies by edict became his friends by the simple applciation of the Golden Rule. He quickly adapted to the customs of the country and observed all the taboos, thus was welcome everywhere. 

After two years there, he tired of staying in hotels. The income left to him by his father was more than $3,000 per year, and the exchange rate between the dollar and yen was sharply in his favor. He was able to rent a house in Toyko for $9 per month and that he could run it with a man cook and his wife as housekeeper for $9 more. He lived at 33 Tsukji where he lived for the remainder of his life.

He also traveled to neighboring lands like the interior of China, Hong Kong and to Siam and Cambodia and wrote letters back about his travels and adventures, also published in Pen and Sword.

After six years in the Orient Charley planned a return visit to Rutland. He brought gifts and photographs and spent many months visiting old friends and haunts. In the fall of 1886, he said his last farewells to the family and returned contentedly to his adopted country, his faithful servants, his tatami mats, his futon, and his Kiku San (whose duty was to play the samisen).

"A local steamer as old as the hills, lean like a greyhoudn, and eaten up with rust worse than a condemned water tank," This description by Joseph Conrad, in his most famous novel, of the fictional Patna, could as well be applied to the actual Lorne as she lay at anchor alongside the Saigon jetty in November, 1887. The ship's officers were English, the crew polyglot, and for the Patna's Moslem pilgrims, substitute Chinese workers returning to their homeland.

It was typical of Charley Ripley, returning from yet another expedition in India and Siam, to scorn the ease of the regular passenger steamers and take passage on this creaky rust-bucket. Except for the officers, he was the only white man aboard. Cargo loaded at last, the ancient vessel crept slowly out of Saigon harbor. November 29th found her clanking and wheezing as she plowed through the placid South China Sea towards Hong Kong.

Six days later, at midnight, off the coast of Hainan, the Lorne struck an uncharted rock and immediately began to fill. There was instant pandemonium aboard as passengers and crew became panic-stricken and unmanageable. In the efforts to get the lifeboats lowered several were swamped or damaged. Charley worked valiantly and unceasingly with the crew to get the boats filled and free, after which the tackle was cut and they pulled for shore. At the end only five ship's officers and Charley remained on board the sinking ship. The six survivors clung to the keel of the remaining overturned boat, but clung to it in order to remain afloat.

As daylight came, the weakened men dropped off one by one. Charley hung on for more than ten hours, and then slipped away. Only one survived to tell the tale-he had held on for 30 hours.

Sideroads: The Remarkable Ripley's William Young Ripley, Part 2

Vermont Marble Co Quarry, West Rutland,
Vermont about 1865, by Carlos W. Nichols, photographer

See the first part of the story here.

William Young Ripley joined in partnership with a fellow named William F Barnes. Barnes had been the first in the area to marble quarry in about 1840. Marble was used in public building construction and high-end homes. The rich vein of carbonate lime was a boon to the area and the partnership flourished, enriching both, for over a decade. Barnes was the guy in charge of quarrying and Ripley the sawing, cutting, and marketing.

The quarry wasn't far from the Ripley home, called "The Center." As it is described in With Pen and Sword: Lives and Times of the Remarkable Rutland Ripley's, by Robert G. Steele, it had "four chimneys, one at each corner, ample and inviting porches on front and sides of the main building, and behind this a large greenhouse and spacious English garden with gravelled walks between the flower beds radiating from a magnificent elm in the center."

Rutland was the marble center of the state and some even said, of the country. The railroad built a spur into the quarry yard to help transport the marble to banks and courthouses all over the country.

The fruitful partnership came to an end in 1850  when Barnes sold his interest out to Vermont Marble Co. Ripley continue his work under his own name with the marble provided by Vermont Marble. In the meantime, not to rest on his really wealthy laurels, he became president of the Rutland County Bank at age 65. His boys were off serving in the Civil War. Upon their return, he turned the business over to his three sons. Charley, who was ill-suited, left soon thereafter to pursue other adventures. Edward eventually left for New York City, and William Young Warren Ripley remained behind, ultimately selling the marble business to Vermont Marble and Redfield Proctor.His son William also sat on the board of directors and later as president of the Bank.

In 1868, he built an opera house in Rutland.  It's reported in Steele's book to not have been a beautiful building and it may not have been needed in small Rutland, Ripley wouldn't allow it to be used for other musical entertainment, so it became a white elephant. It burned down - with little fanfare - in 1875 about the time he fell and broke his hip. He died at 77 of complications.

Each of his children would forge their own lives and each became an interesting historical subject on their own.  I'll share a couple of stories next.