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Post by sue75 on Apr 28, 2013 14:46:46 GMT -5
Witnesses? Witnesses to what?
I posted on Oren Root's Persons and Persuasions, I'd say, 8-10 years ago.
Oren Root was Henry Breckinridge's stepson. I hesitate to call him a junior because Oren Root had two sons, one who was referred to as Oren Root, Jr.
(Oren Root was the great-nephew of Theodore Roosevelt's Secretary of State.)
Oren Root was a young Princeton University student who was aroused out of his sleep by Henry Breckinridge for directions up to the Lindbergh home. That would have been the early morning hours of March 2, 1932.
Oren Root spent weekends with the Lindberghs at the Cold Soil Road farmhouse near Princeton and also at the Lindbergh house known as Highfields or Sorrel Hill.
Source: Persons and Persuasions by Oren Root (published in 1974)
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Post by sue75 on Apr 28, 2013 15:03:44 GMT -5
Could the following event have been the cause of the "warped shutters" that graced the window out of which the Lindbergh baby was allegedly kidnapped?
From page 202, Persons and Persuasions:
"There were a number of amusing episodes during my weekend visits. One which I remember proves that even a person with Lindbergh's strong technical background is not technically infallible. A central humidifying system had been installed in the Hopewell house at a time when that kind of device was relatively new and untried. Lindbergh was very proud of it and went out of his way to explain to me how much healthier it was to live during the winter in a properly humidified house. It so happend that I was there the first time that the system was tried. When we woke up the next morning, the walls and all the furniture were soaking wet. Lindbergh had lowered the furnace themostat for the night, forgetting that this would raise the relative humidity and cause the moisture in the air to precipitate."
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Post by sue75 on Apr 28, 2013 15:26:21 GMT -5
Oren Root was at the Hopewell house just a few days before March 1, 1932. He had spent that last weekend with them, a weekend that is highlighted in Noel Behn's book on the Lindbergh kidnapping.
Interesting to note that the "Miss Root" that Noel Behn alludes to bears the same last name as Oren's.
(Don't always count on an index because many times there IS NO INDEX or the index leaves a lot to be desired. Do the hard work and go read the book.) Laura Vitray ALLUDES to the Baltimore Lunchroom, but you know damn well that she is referring to it when she speaks of those famous one-armed chairs and that the "cafeteria" was open all night or 24 hours a day. The Baltimore Dairy Lunchroom -- chain stores throughout the northeast and midwest in the 1920s & 1930s, originating in Baltimore, Maryland.
Who was the mysterious Miss Root? Behn says she was a Morrow maid, but was she related to Oren Root? Quite possibly was she Oren's sister, Alva? Alva and Oren were the children of Henry Breckinridge's wife at the time, Aida de Acosta.
(See pages 42, 43, and 395 because you will not find a reference to her in Behn's index.)
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Post by sue75 on Apr 28, 2013 15:38:09 GMT -5
Excerpts from Persons and Persuasions;
"Where I got to know Lindbergh really well, however, was in Princeton. He and his charming and talented wife first rented a house in the ouskirts of Princeton itself." (page 201)
"While I was a student at Princeton, the Lindberghs generously invited me out for many weekends, first at the house in Princeton and later at the house in Hopewell." (page 201)
"I greatly enjoyed those weekends. Both Charles and Anne Lindbergh were stimulating, and I gained a great deal from their company. Although Lindbergh had made a good deal of money from his writing and from his consulting work, and although Anne Lindbergh was a member of the wealthy Morrow family, they lived simply. They did this because they liked it that way and also because they thought it was right. They did have a couple taking care of them, but Lindbergh was careful to justify this luxury on the ground that it freed him and his wife to do creative things which they could not have done if they were tied down to housekeeping. The implication was that if they could not have philosophically justified having the couple they would not have had them. (page 201)
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Post by Michael on Apr 29, 2013 7:18:23 GMT -5
Great research (as always) Sue.
Your instincts are correct here. "Miss Root" was Alva but while Behn was correct about when she was there - he makes a mistake saying she was part of the Morrow Staff.
I believe Gov. Hoffman added something about her in his Liberty Series too.
My gut tells me "no" since the shutters were outside the house but I would defer to Kevin's expertise concerning this one.
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Post by lightningjew on Apr 29, 2013 11:11:16 GMT -5
I think I asked this a long time ago, but I guess it fell through the cracks: Michael, can you say a little more about Miss Root? I've read in multiple sources that she was there that weekend and left when Betty arrived, and I think I've seen her in the background of some footage of CAL Jr.--the home movie that looks like it was taken outside a ground-floor window, with him peering over the sill. If you look closely, there seems to be an middle-aged woman behind him, I guess making sure he doesn't fall. I've seen this woman identified as Miss Root, but it might not be (particularly if Miss Root was actually Henry Breckinridge's stepdaughter). Also, if she wasn't on the Morrow staff, who was she, where did she come from, and what did she do for the family? If she was already at Highfields, why have Betty come to Hopewell to replace her? I mean, what did Betty do that Miss Root couldn't? She seems, as Sue says, a mysterious figure. Until now, I've never even heard her first name (Alva).
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Post by sue75 on Apr 29, 2013 12:21:59 GMT -5
Behn says that Miss Root left with the Breckinridges on Sunday night. Oren Root also said he left on the same Sunday evening.
page 202:
"I had spend the previous weekend in Hopewell and when I left on Sunday night I knew that the family was planning to return early the next morning to the Morrow house in Englewood, where they generally spent the middle part of the week."
On Sunday night, Henry, Aida, and Miss Root were all dropped off at the Princeton Junction station. Well, wouldn't that have been Oren's destination, too, since he was a Princeton University student?
Unless Oren led the way to the Lindbergh house for the Breckinridges in his own car, Oren would have needed a ride back to the campus in Princeton on Sunday night.
There are different accounts as to when and by what means Henry Breckinridge arrived in Hopewell and when he left there.
Why did Henry Breckinridge, according to Behn, need to take the train when, at least according to one account, his chauffeur took him to Hopewell?
Was Aida with Henry on that initial trip to Hopewell?
Joyce Milton said he was called to Hopewell while he was attending the New York University Alumni affair. She doesn't mention Aida being with him.
Behn says the Breckinridges arrived on Saturday so that Henry could orchestrate the bogus kidnapping to cover for Elisabeth Morrow.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 29, 2013 16:01:59 GMT -5
This is a great find Sue. I have been wanting to know more about Alva Root also. So glad you posted all this.
Alva Root was Anne's weekend helper with Charlie. Betty always had the weekends off. Elsie says in her statement to police that Anne, Charlie and Miss Root arrived at Highfields on Saturday, February 27. Elsie says that one of the Morrow chauffeurs drove them down. She thought that it was Henry Ellerson. Alva was there Saturday and Sunday. She left with the Breckinridges on Sunday evening.
I didn't know that Alva had a brother until Sue made this post. Would love to get a copy of his book.
In Anne's book Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead, Anne talks about Aida being in Hopewell right after the kidnapping. Anne mentions on Tuesday March 8th that Aida has been acting as her general buffer from the outside world, sometimes acting for her over the phone. She must have come down with Henry in the early morning hours of March 2.
I had always thought that Anne took care of Charlie herself when spending weekends at Highfields, with some assistance from Elsie when needed. Anne was trying to bond more with Charlie by caring for him herself on weekends at Highfields. Maybe Alva came along this time because the Breckinridges were coming to visit also. She would then be able to go home with them.
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Post by Michael on Apr 30, 2013 19:38:56 GMT -5
Sue and Amy have done a really good job here. I will supplement their posts by saying that Alva was born in 1914. She was either 17 or 18 on March 1st. I was told she had to take classes on Monday. From what I can tell she attended two schools: Sweet Briar College (Virginia) and Miss Chapin School (NYC). My guess is her classes were in the City.
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Post by lightningjew on Apr 30, 2013 22:23:46 GMT -5
So, just to be clear, Alva Root was Henry Breckinridge's stepdaughter? How did she come to be employed by the Lindberghs? I can see if she was a related to Breckinridge, this would be how she knew them, but I guess what I'm asking is why would she need to work for the Lindberghs?
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Post by Michael on May 1, 2013 5:39:50 GMT -5
Yes - there's no doubt about that.
Her Family called it "babysitting." The way Amy describes it seems to fit, and from what Sue has posted about Oren that appears to show what she was doing too - just that being a 17 or 18 year old girl - she's helping out with CJr. while she's there. My understanding is that it wasn't an "official" type of situation.
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Post by stella7 on May 1, 2013 7:00:51 GMT -5
On Sunday night, Henry, Aida, and Miss Root were all dropped off at the Princeton Junction station. Well, wouldn't that have been Oren's destination, too, since he was a Princeton University student?
Sue, coming from Hopewell, Princeton Jct is just beyond Princeton University, so they would have likely dropped Oren off first. There is also a Miss Chapin School between Princeton and Lawrenceville, not sure if it was also in New York, perhaps Aida was going to school just outside of Princeton.
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Post by stella7 on May 1, 2013 7:07:27 GMT -5
I should have looked this up first, the school in Princeton was Mrs. Chapin's School, so it was more likely she went to school in New York.
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Post by sue75 on May 1, 2013 12:26:42 GMT -5
A. Scott Berg interviewed Oren Root in 1994. I will post the exact quote later, but he said that when they (Aida & Henry Breckinridge and Oren Root?) got up to the estate, the house was blazing with lights. So Oren, according to his own account, was at the estate on the last weekend, leaving on Sunday night, and then he was back very early Tuesday morning, March 2. I think he says they got there at 2:30 am.
There is a picture of Oren and his sister, Alva, in Persons and Persusaions, taken some time during his Navy years.
I found other infrormation on Alva. Her married name was Bound, so she was known as Alva Root Bound. Her husband was a noted banker. In later years, after she had kids, she was involved with the Red Cross and, I believe, the Episcopalian Church. So, evidently, she was a caretaker at heart. Maybe Aida raised her that way, and that's why, as a young woman, she was helping out with Charles Lindbergh, Jr.
Aida was a Catholic, but she abandoned the Catholic religion at some point in her life. Oren Root, however was a faithful Catholic, and his love for God is evident in his autobiography.
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Post by sue75 on May 11, 2013 12:29:07 GMT -5
From Persons and Persuasions:
page 202-203:
"It was from the house in Hopewell that the Lindberghs' first child, then only eighteen months old, was kidnapped on the night of Tuesday, March 1, 1932. On that evening I had been attending a late class on the Princeton campus. On my way back to my room I stopped to have a visit with Fife Symington, one of my classmates, who later in life was appointed by President Nixon as his ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago. As I entered Fife Symington's room, he told me that he had just heard on the radio that the Lindbergh baby had been kidnapped in Hopewell. In those days there were many false stories and rumors about the Lindberghs, and I was confident that this was one of them. I had spent the previous weekend in Hopewell and when I left Sunday night I knew the family was planning to return early the next morning to the Morrow house in Englewood, where they generally spent the middle part of the week. Clearly, therefore, the story about the baby's having been kidnapped from Hopewell was untrue. I went back to my room and went to sleep without concern.
At two o'clock the next morning there was a violent knocking on my door. I rose to find Henry Breckinridge, my stepfather, who had driven from New York and who stopped at my room to ask me to direct him to the Lindbergh house. The reason, of course, was that the Lindbergh baby had in fact been kidnapped and he, as Lindbergh's lawyer, was needed. What had happened was that the baby woke up on Monday morning with a cold, thereby causing the family to change its plans and stay an extra two days in Hopewell. There are many mysteries about the tragic event which are still unsolved. One of them is how the kidnapper could have known of that last-minute change of plans."
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Post by Deleted on May 11, 2013 17:41:00 GMT -5
Good post Sue. Looks like you have answered your other thread about when Breckinridge arrived at Highfields. Since Breckinridge was in Princeton at 2 a.m. he probably didn't arrive at the Lindbergh home until around 2:30 in the morning March 2.
Like so many of us who post here, Oren also wonders how the kidnapper could have known about the last minute change of plans that had Charlie at the house on a Tuesday evening. Someone had to have communicated this information to the kidnapper(s).
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Post by sue75 on May 13, 2013 12:12:41 GMT -5
In his exuberance, did Oren Root inadvertently communicated to others (someone at Princeton University?) about the Lindberghs' plans?
There's a passage in Persons and Persuasions about Oren meeting up with an underworld character in the Lindbergh kidnapping case. I think Oren went to the mobster's Manhattan penthouse one night in 1932 after the abduction.
Something in A Talent to Decieve by William Norris that points the finger at a college/university person?
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Post by sue75 on May 13, 2013 12:17:53 GMT -5
Also, is Oren saying he knew the baby was not sick as of Sunday night?
There's another account of someone being a guest a previous weekend. That guest saw someone peering through the window a few days or weeks before the kidnapping.
I posted it many years ago. I'll have to see if I can locate it again and post it.
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Post by sue75 on May 13, 2013 18:13:15 GMT -5
Read the excerpts below.
There were other houseguests who observed something strange at Highfields.
(There is also another account of the same episode below that was in an aviation journal that appeared online in the 2000s.)
So two other witnesses would be Donald Keyhoe and his wife who seem to have been up at the estate just prior to the kidnapping. I think author Michael Parfit interviewed Keyhoe and his wife for his 1989 book.
Chasing the Glory: Travels Across America
by Michael Parfit
page 208:
"They invited you up to Hopewell, didn't they? Helen said.
And Anne sang to the baby "You must have been a beautiful baby, because look at you now..."
page 209:
"Somebody peeped in the window while Major Keyhoe was there," she said, " a peeping Tom and he wanted to say, and he's regretted it ever since -- he wanted to say, "You should have something on the windows to protect him. And that was just before the kidnapping."
She turned to Don, "I remember you said, the baby took your hand and wrapped his fingers around your fingers."
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Post by sue75 on May 14, 2013 11:56:51 GMT -5
The episode witnessed by the Keyhoes, Donald and Helen, seems to have occurred at the farmhouse outside of Princeton.
See Joyce Milton's Loss of Eden (I think it's page 204) and The Immortalists book (page 40). Both of these accounts say that Keyhoe saw a deranged man at the Mount Rose house on Cold Soil Road.
According to these accounts, Keyhoe says he saw a deranged man at the window at the house that was close to Princeton.
Did Keyhoe see a patient at the Skillman facility for epileptics?
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Post by john on Jul 31, 2013 1:00:06 GMT -5
Interesting about Oren Root, Jr., Sue. He was also very active in the New York Republican party for many years, was a major booster of Wendell Willkie for president at the 1940 Republican convention, putting him politically in opposition to the by then uber-isolationist Lindbergh. Root was a man with connections to, among others, the Rockefellers, was politically moderate in a time when that was okay with GOP party regulars. I can easily imagine him becoming lifelong pals with Ann Lindbergh, less to CAL.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 19, 2014 10:34:18 GMT -5
I was wondering if Henry or Aida Breckinridge were ever asked by LE about the weekend they spent at Hopewell right before the kidnapping. We know Alva Root came down on February 27th to help Anne take care of Charlie. We also know that Lindbergh brought Henry and Aida Breckinridge down from New York with him on Saturday the 27th. We know the Breckinridges were there because of Elsie' statement to police on March 10, and by the posts on this thread Oren was also in the mix, perhaps having dinner on either Saturday or Sunday night with everyone. Oren was under the impression that Anne and Charlie were going back to Next Day Hill on Monday like they always did.
So my question is, since Elsie talks about the entire weekend of Feb. 27 and 28 revealing the presence of the Breckinridges in the Hopewell house, did LE ever ask the Breckinridges for their comments about that weekend or was this time period not considered important to the kidnapping investigation?
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Post by Michael on Feb 21, 2014 18:15:50 GMT -5
So my question is, since Elsie talks about the entire weekend of Feb. 27 and 28 revealing the presence of the Breckinridges in the Hopewell house, did LE ever ask the Breckinridges for their comments about that weekend or was this time period not considered important to the kidnapping investigation? I've never found anything in the documentation to indicate they had. It's possible they did, but it's not there now if they had. Or, since they were at Highfields a lot after the crime its possible they informally conversed with the Police on this subject - in fact I believe its quite probable. I am 99.9% certain no Police Officer ever interviewed Alva. Since Dave interviewed many of the Troopers who were alive back in the 1980's, when he comes back, remember to ask him about this.
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Post by feathers on Dec 13, 2016 20:56:30 GMT -5
Michael,
I note that you make reference in your footnotes to a conversation with Alva Root Bound. Did she provide any insight on Breckinridge's private opinion of Condon? Publicly he described him as a "wonderful man" and he did live at Condon's house for several weeks...
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Post by Michael on Dec 14, 2016 17:52:04 GMT -5
Michael,
I note that you make reference in your footnotes to a conversation with Alva Root Bound. Did she provide any insight on Breckinridge's private opinion of Condon? Publicly he described him as a "wonderful man" and he did live at Condon's house for several weeks... I did ask her that and just about everything else I could think of. Unfortunately she did not recall, and in fact, I believe she said Condon and the other characters were not discussed. She told me her mother was very upset about what happened, that she did not notice anything different that weekend, and that she believed her mother was "kept out of it" due to her age at the time (which makes sense since there is very little mentioned about her). Something else she told me was that her mother "rode the horse" when she was in Hopewell and I wondered about that a lot. Then one day going through Trooper Sawyer's photo album, sure enough, there were pictures of a horse that he took when stationed at Highfields. Anyway, Breckenridge stayed at Condon's house because he didn't trust him. Publicly he loved the guy - right? But he was always suspicious of him.
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Post by Wayne on Nov 1, 2017 16:24:38 GMT -5
Hi ilovedfw,
I'm not doubting you, but how do you know Alva hated babysitting Charlie?
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Post by rebekah on Nov 1, 2017 17:24:37 GMT -5
Alva Root hated babysitting for CALJr because he was such a brat and spoiled. I'm not doubting you, either, ilovedfw, and I've read that she didn't really like the job. However, I think that being a "difficult" child could have resulted in the fact that he was not well. I'm wondering if he ever felt good. The doctor noted that his skin was extremely dry, probably from the sunlamp treatments. Guess they didn't have baby lotion in 1932.
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Post by Michael on Nov 4, 2017 18:45:29 GMT -5
Alva Root hated babysitting for CALJr because he was such a brat and spoiled. I'm not doubting you, either, ilovedfw, and I've read that she didn't really like the job. However, I think that being a "difficult" child could have resulted in the fact that he was not well. I'm wondering if he ever felt good. The doctor noted that his skin was extremely dry, probably from the sunlamp treatments. Guess they didn't have baby lotion in 1932. On pages 57-8 of TDC I wrote that while she found the babysitting job difficult, she loved to go to Hopewell. I could get my notes if anyone wants me to see if there's anything more I could add. However, I was struck by the comment about the child being " spoiled." I suppose my thought about this is " how?" I mean, at this point it's pretty famous about CAL laying down the law with all of these strict rules specifically designed to prevent that type of behavior, yet, here is another one in addition to Van Ingen's description of him being the same way. It gets me to thinking " why didn't these methods work?"
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Post by stella7 on Nov 4, 2017 19:12:50 GMT -5
21 month old children are prone to temper tantrums that's why they call it the terrible two's.
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Post by Michael on Nov 4, 2017 19:20:02 GMT -5
21 month old children are prone to temper tantrums that's why they call it the terrible two's. I've heard that before too but why isn't it referred to in that way? See what I mean? The term is "spoiled" and it is the exact term used when explaining why he was subjected to the strict guidelines laid out by Lindbergh. So I am baffled as to why he was "spoiled" anyway due to all of the countermeasures in place to prevent it. Or, if they do not work on children of that age and they are/will ALL be "spoiled" regardless then why were they in place?
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