[Indexed as: “Child Chasers. – Four Families in Race After Little Ones. – Gen. Schaefer’s Wife Kidnaps Her Two Daughters. – Alexander Young Steals His Child. – Grandparents Sue for Possession of Grandson. – J. E. Barbour Has Writ for Child of Capt. Broome,” The Boston Sunday Globe (Ma.), Jun. 21, 1903]
NEW YORK, June 20 – With New York as their central field of action, four families of wealth and position are riven asunder by bitter struggles for the possession of dearly loved children.
Kidnappings, carried to a successful issue by daring and sensational methods, orders of court, the expenditure of vast sums of money and employment of a small army of detectives, figure in the several battles.
Gen. Emil Shaefer, after sending detectives in pursuit of his young and beautiful wife through five states in an effort to recover his two little daughters, and after bringing the runaways back to the jurisdiction of a court in which he obtained an order giving him possession of the babies, was engaged today in a second chase after the vanishing wife and children.
They had disappeared again at the very hour of his hard-won legal victory, and the general’s detectives confess themselves baffled.
Alexander Young, ex-county attorney of Hudson county, N. J., went to Greenwich today, and with the assistance of detectives kidnapped his child from The Elms, the home of the little one’s aunt, and the very hotel from which Mrs. Schaefer had formerly disappeared in successful flight.
Mr. Young, the little girl, and the detectives escaped in a wild ride across the Connecticut border, eluding a most determined pursuit. His divorced wife, a niece of the late Ward McAllister, now the bride of Alfred Jongers, the artist, left only Thursday on her honeymoon trip to Paris.
Mr. and Mrs. Edwin F. Swain of Boston have brought suit for the possession of 6-year-old Kennett Swain Parsons, now living with his father, Charles J. Parsons, and his stepmother, in Paterson. The grandparents say the child has not received proper care since the death of their daughter, the child’s mother.
Not less sensational was the attempt of James E. Barbour, one of Washington’s wealthiest men, today to prevent Capt. Cochrane Broome, a Porto Rican officer, from taking the latter’s little daughter aboard a ship bound for Porto Rico at the State st. pier in Brooklyn.
Mr. Barbour, who thinks his grandchild cannot be cared for properly in Porto Rico, failed to find his son-in-law, and returned to his apartments at the Waldorf Astoria, whence he will direct the continuation of his fight for the possession of the little girl. He is armed with a writ of habeas corpus.
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Young-Jongers Case.
Lawyer Alexander Young was formerly county attorney of Hudson county, N. J. His recently divorced wife, Mrs. Alphonse Jongers, is now crossing the Atlantic on the French liner La Lorraine with her new husband. Mr. Young went to Greenwich today and kidnapped their child from The Elms, where the child was in care of her aunt.
Mr. Young was accompanied by a private detective, and when they jumped into a waiting buggy with the child, friends of his former wife started in a wild pursuit that ended only when Rye, N. Y., was reached.
The father vowed long ago to get possession of his little daughter, and he made the most careful plans to carry out the kidnapping successfully. A number of private detectives in his employ had been searching for the child for weeks, and when they found where she was they telegraphed to Mr. Young, and he immediately started for the little Connecticut village, which was in an uproar tonight over the sdaring kidnapping.
Mrs. Jongers, the former Mrs. Young, is a niece of the late Ward McAllister, and through incidents growing out of an unhappy married life, she has been brought into a great deal of publicity in the last two years. She and her former husband figured in hotel quarrels and police court scenes several times.
Mrs. Young decided upon a divorce. The decree was granted recently, after which she became the wife of Alphonse Jongers, an artist, and started immediately for a trip to Paris, leaving the child with its aunt.
Great secrecy as to the whereabouts of the child was maintained, when Mrs. Young, not willing to submit to the court order that gave custody of his daughter to Mrs. Jongers, obtained a writ of habeas corpus. When the newly married Jongers reached La Lorraine on last Thursday Mr. Young was there to serve the writ. Mrs. Jongers contemptuously threw the paper overboard and went to her state room.
Mr. Young doubles his efforts to find the child, and detectives followed every possible clew. They sent word to him this morning that they had found the child in The Elms, the same hotel from which the wife of Gen. Emil Schaefer fled with her children, which she had kidnapped.
Mr. Young and a detective hired a rig at the Greenwich station and drove to The Elms, where they saw Mrs. Gilellen, the proprietor of the place.
She was not aware of the identity of her visitors, and she allowed the child to enter the parlor where they were. Without saying a word, Mr. Young seized his child and ran for the buggy, the detective stopping long enough to make sure that Mrs. Gilellan did not interfere. He then ran to the buggy also, and Mr. Young whipped up the horse, which raced at top speed down the Port Chester road.
Meanwhile several persons had started in pursuit in rigs and trolley cars, but they did not overtake the fleeing party, which crossed the New York line and disappeared.
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Swain Wants Grandchild.
Vice Chancellor Stevenson, in Paterson, announced today, at the conclusion of the testimony in the remarkable suit brought before him by Edward F. and Eunice J. Swain of Boston against Chas. J. Parsons and his second wife, of 6-year-old Kennett Swain Parsons, that he would render his decision Monday.
Charles Parsons testified that in August, 1900, two years after the death of his first wife, Anna D. S, Swain, he married his present wife, who was Miss Carrie Mason of Massachusetts.
It was charged by the plaintiffs that Parsons and his present wife were not in position to serve the best interests of the child, and the testimony developed further that the grandparents have for two years been following the Parsons couple over the United States, endeavoring, as the father declared on the stand, to kidnap his child.
He declared that they had followed himself and wife from Boston to San Francisco; from there to Los Angeles, Virginia City, Kansas City, Galveston, New Orleans and Paterson, or an itinerary covering nearly 7000 miles.
Parsons testified today that is was solely in trying to avoid the Swains that he and his wife had been compelled to lead a nomadic existence for two years, and that they had been harried at each stopping place by private detectives until their lives had become a burden.
“W have lived the lives of fugitives,” he declared, “and while I have spent a small fortune to retain possession of my son, I am ready to become a beggar before giving up the fight.”
One of the most interested spectators of the hearing was the little boy for whom his relatives are fighting. He smiled and nodded continually to his father while the latter was on the stand, but paid no attention to his grandparents. The boy is, temporarily, in the custody of Ex-Assistant Postmaster Frederick C. Barnes of Paterson.
On Nov. 16, 1899, Parsons brought proceedings before Surrogate Robert Grant of Boston to obtain the custody of his child. It was awarded him, and in August of the following year he remarried.
He testified today that his income was more than ample to support his wife and child in luxury.
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Capt. Broome Came Not.
James E, Barbour, a wealthy resident of Washington, D C, went to the State st. pier in Brooklyn today, armed with a writ of habeas corpus, and determined to prevent his son-in-law, Capt. George Cochrane Broome, a Porto Rican army officer, from sailing with the latter’s 6-year-old daughter.
Every man who went aboard the steamship Ponce, bound for Porto Rico, was closely scrutinized by distinguished looking Mr. Barbour, but his vigil availed him nothing, as no Capt. Broome appeared. After a long wait Mr. Barbour returned to the Waldorf-Astoria, where he is stopping, and made plans for pushing his search for the child.
Mr. Barbour’s objection to the child’s being taken to Porto Rico is that he does not believe the little one can be cared for as she should be in that faraway country.
Capt. Brrome’s marriage to May Keyworth Barbour, in Washington in 1898 was one of the most brilliant society features of that season.
Dispatches from San Juan last March brought news that a Mrs. Broome, whose husband was a captain in the Porto Rican army
NOTE
Archaic spelling of Puerto Rico (“Porto Rico”) has been retained.
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