BLOG in TWO PARTS:

1. All about my curious nickname, “The Mayflower Medium.”

2. An old family scandal related to “The Mayflower Madam”… sort of.

So— I have been given a new aka and I don’t dislike it. Let me explain this: Somebody I had not heard from in over a decade found me online and noticed that an internet search displayed results by my name indicating I am called “The Mayflower Medium.” This was funny, and I had to explain what it was all about. So, now I am doing that all over again—this time, however, I am writing to inform blog readers as to how this nickname was given me. Yes, it was given. I have had enough to do to keep people aware of my identity without adding a confusing alias).

Who gave me This Name?

A friend of mine assigned me the nickname sometime last summer, as I was riding the subway through Boston to make it to The Museum of Fine Arts. It was spoken in jest and I forgot about it within moments. However, my friend thought he was awfully clever and added the words “Mayflower Medium” as a suffix to my name in a number of emails. Some thought it funny enough to use incessantly. Though this had its roots in humor and in a campy cultural scandal, there remains the fact that I had ancestors on The Mayflower, which adds an ingredient of truth to this jumbled equation. Because of that authentic component, and because I did not find the chiding use of this nickname to be abrasive, I am keeping it as a proper sobriquet. In other words, I am being a good sport and allowing the moniker as I am not promoting it, nor upset with it. In other words, call me Jeffrey Justice “The Mayflower Medium.” Or don’t—it’s all fine.

Interesting Fact:

“The Mayflower Madam” came first!

Who was the woman known to so many as “The Mayflower Madam? She was a socialite who made a big stir when she was busted for running an escort service during the 1980’s. She was known in the tabloid press (and subsequently to the entire nation) as “The Mayflower Madam.” Her actual name is Sydney Biddle Barrows. After the legal trouble and media storm it generated slowly subsided, she went on to author a few books and was the subject of a biopic in which she was played by Candace Bergen. Below is information from the Wikipedia article titled Sydney Biddle Barrows (Information retrieved from said page on 13 January, 2009):

“Sydney Biddle Barrows (born January 14, 1952), known as the Mayflower Madam, was a modern American madam. After her escort service was exposed and disbanded, she gained worldwide notoriety, in part because she was part of the upper-class Biddle family of Philadelphia and is a Mayflower descendant. During her years as a madam, she used the alias Sheila Devin.”

A Century-Old Family Scandal which happened at the Biddle Home

What do I have in common with Sydney Biddle Barrows? I don’t run a brothel. I am pretty sure she is not working as a medium. We both have similar genealogies but she grew up with a sterling spoon in her mouth while I had a comfortable—though far from rich—upbringing.

Actually, there is an unusual connection between the Biddle Family and a branch of my family which had hailed from New York State. Their surname was Schufeldt— my spelling may not be 100% accurate. The Schufeldt Family spent their summers in the Point Shore neighborhood of Amesbury, Massachusetts—as guests of the Biddle Family who owned a large mansion which sat opposite the wide, flat Merrimack River. This home still stands today, its tall, mute walls plastered with stucco. A sign affixed to the building’s front wall declares that it is the Biddle Home and was built circa 1900. If these Biddles were related to Sydney Biddle Barrows I would not be surprised. This “Old Money” family is well-established in the United States and therefore, a few branches of the wealthy Biddle Family must be ensconced in a number of cities. I cannot tell you for certain that there exists a blood tie between Sydney Biddle Barrows and the Biddle Family my ancestors were close with because I have no time to sleuth around for proof. Besides, there is a far more intriguing story concerning events which took place at the Point Shore summer home of the Biddle Family: This concerns an old family scandal.

I know about a family scandal which started at the Biddle Home in Amesbury sometime around the year 1900. I heard this tragedy so many times as a child—yet it seems like a fantastic tale of star-crossed lovers written for the stage. Far from being a tale of love gone wrong penned for the stage, it was an actual course of events.

Mr. and Mrs. Schufeldt were dear friends of these Biddles, and were with them every summer, to my knowledge, for several consecutive years. Each year the Biddle Family had the Schufeldts as guests to their summer home, they would also bring their reputedly shy daughter along. She was called Hallie Schufeldt. One summer, Hallie fell in love with a young man she met at the estate. She may have been 19 or 20 years old. She may have thought that fate was nothing over which to worry—but, fate was to be a twisted and cruel influence on her life.

As she blossomed into a young woman, she had grown attractive enough to gain the attention of a young man who worked for the Biddle family. He was there every day or nearly as often since the nature of his work was to make deliveries to the Biddle Home. It isn’t difficult to imagine a young, uncultivated man from New Hampshire falling in love with a reserved, flirtatious heiress from New York. Questions arose regarding the possibility of this “delivery boy” having eyes for Hallie’s inheritance. These questions would be answered by brutal fate; they were apparently void of substance.

Hallie, assumedly intoxicated by emotions of love and sexual arousal, was soon speaking of marriage. However, Mr. Schufeldt found his daughter’s choice of suitor repulsive. He considered the boy too young, too unlettered, and too poor to make his daughter a suitable husband. Perhaps the younger man also presented some unspoken threat to the rigid control and authority he lorded over his daughter. I can imagine her father being vexed and angry when he faced a new reality in which a sturdy, handsome youth was the male who had the most “power” over his daughter—a power which was based in his daughter’s sexuality.

Hallie was presented an ultimatum by her father and told to stop seeing the delivery man. Rather than do as she was told, she became indignant and ignored her father’s edict. Instead, she began boldly relating her determination to marry the man whom her father detested. The intensity of emotion her uncharacteristic behavior ignited within her father was one which would not die with him. Rather, it would exert a tragic impression on several lives. He next told his daughter that she would be allowed to marry the man she loved. However, if she did, she would be cut out of the family completely and for the duration of her life. This meant that she would not be able to claim her share of the impressive material wealth the family owned. She would also be losing all contact with her father, mother and other relations—and have no support from them in any way.

The Schufeldts were a wealthy, powerful family and Hallie was a naïve young woman— the threats her father made when she announced her plans to marry against his wishes should have stopped the marriage. In 1900, women were only able to work at a scant number of occupations, none of which would have brought in more than a pittance. These jobs were largely in mills and factories. They were, by nature, not genteel occupations. Miss Schufeldt was accustomed to elegant living and not accustomed to doing any sort of labor. There were maids and other servants who took care of everything which Hallie owned, needed or used. This young woman was so poorly equipped to live a life detached from her family and from its money that I marvel at her persistence and determination. She remained resolute in her decision to marry the man she first met while flirting on the sun-dappled lawn of the Biddle estate.

The delivery man she fell in love with became the man she married. This man was the grandfather of my mother’s father. After she became Mrs. Hallie Somers, she saw her old way of life vanish into memories which were so unrelated to her new life that they must have seemed like dimly-understood dreams which concerned the wealthy classes. Effectively disowned by her family, she rapidly left the opulence of her former home for the rotten charm of a tumbledown shack complete with dirt floors. While she acclimated to her new home, she certainly also started to appreciate the disintegration of the profound love which led her to a life of pained poverty… Her new husband’s dependence upon alcohol worsened daily, becoming a pathological disorder which generated passionate shouting matches and also led to his perpetual state of unemployment.

I sometimes reflect on that story. Lately, I see beneath the surface theme of “Riches to Rags,” “Love is the Pastime of Fools,” etc. The subtext is fluid and moving with contrasting currents. The notion that obedience to family trumps romantic love is there. So is the belief that staying determined to our personal goals is paramount. Varieties of love, such as that a parent feels compared to that which a smitten teenager knows are explored, yes. It is the abuse of love and allegiance which I am focused on, presently. There is usually no excuse for stopping all communications with a child, a lover—a friend.

Truly Yours,

Jeffrey Justice