A Family Connection
My Conversation with Lainey Tibbetts
Publication Date: November 12, 2024
Preface (Spoiler Alert)
I recently had the absolute pleasure of chatting with Lainey Tibbetts (Tibby), the great-granddaughter of Harland Bryant Tibbetts and his wife, Florence Edwina Gill Tibbetts, on her personal connection to the story revealed in “Call Me a Bastard”.
Harland was Mary Martha Parker’s lead personal attorney for 14 years, was instrumental in negotiating both the 1931 Mishou Agreement and the 1932 Sakrausky Agreement, and was given two-thirds of her estate as part of a secret agreement under which he would transfer those funds to Mary Martha’s two illegitimate children, Aimee Henry Mishou and Martha Sylvester Sakrausky.
Harland died of a heart attack on July 6, 1943, just 34 days after Mary Martha’s death, and before her will could be probated. It was the one scenario for which Mary Martha had not planned.
After much legal haggling, it was determined that the funds bequeathed to Harland belonged to Harland’s wife, and she was under no obligation to honor the agreement her husband had made with Mary Martha. In a heroic and altruistic move, Florence chose, instead, to honor her husband’s legacy of integrity, and spent much of the rest of her life ensuring Mary Martha’s daughters received their inheritances.
I first reached out to Tibby in March of 2021 in the early stages of researching “Call Me a Bastard”, and have been honored to have her along on this journey.
What follows is an edited transcript of our interview.
LORI
I’m so excited to talk with you today – thanks! Let’s jump right in and start with your relationship to Harland and Florence.
TIBBY
Harland and Florence – well, “Tibsa” and “Founcie” to me – are my great grandparents. And the story behind that is that when my mother was born, she couldn't say Tibbetts or Florence. She said she heard the maid saying, “Mr. Tibbetts”, so she said “Tibsa”. And then Florence became “Founcie”, and those were their names to me, from what I heard, because I never met them their whole life.
LORI
That's awesome. It kind of personalizes them, too, doesn't it, even though you never had the opportunity to meet them. But, your mother and aunt [their grand-daughters] knew them, though, correct?
TIBBY
Yes, my mother passed away nine years ago. My aunt is still alive. They were young – eight and four in 1943 when Harland died, and 24 and 20 when Florence died in 1959, I think. Actually, I have two aunts [second double cousins] that are still alive, and they knew them, as well. In our family, there was a double marriage, meaning my grandmother married her husband, and then her sister married my grandfather's brother. [Harland’s and Florence’s daughters married brothers.] So, it was a very tight family, and genes were repeated.
My grandmother was Harland’s first-born daughter, and she died at the age of 72, so that's how I would have gotten some of the information. But her sister just died three years ago. She was a centenarian. And, I did get a little bit of history through her, but it's very interesting. Harland’s second daughter never wanted to talk about any ancestry. When I became so interested in this, she made it very clear when I visited her, “I don't want to talk about it, and of that ancestry stuff.” So, secretive, yes.
LORI
But, no indication on why that was. Was it because she just wasn't interested, or didn't know enough, or just didn't want to share what she didn't know?
TIBBY
I've done a little reading up on the high society from Boston, which is kind of where my family came through. I'm not directly related, but I mean, my great aunt, Harland’s second child, even spoke that way, and we used to make fun of it, of course. But, as I read about that way of life which, you know, Mary, Martha came from, as well. They were very secretive because they had a fear of losing their status.
LORI
Right? And everything was connected to it, right? I mean, their wealth, their social standing, their marriage prospects, their educational choices and jobs, everything was related to the social standing.
One of the things I found in going through the research for Mary Martha's family especially was that they were all related in terms of business ventures, as well. I definitely got a sense that, you know, if you angered one member of the family or humiliated them, man, your future was going to be markedly different.
TIBBY
Exactly. And another perspective of that is when [an elderly family member] was alive, I had a cake made by a bakery that had the whole ancestry of Harland and Florence on it, all their names, and brought it to her house. It was the coolest thing! One of the names on the cake, a great grandfather on another side of the family, was Kaplan, and my [family member] looked at that cake and said, “I can never show that to [another relative who was still alive at the time] because we kept that a big secret. We never could have gotten into the Country Club if anybody knew that we had any Jewish in our blood.”
That way of thinking had been taught to her by her mother, who was taught by Harland.
It was a different time, wasn’t it?
LORI
Different times, yes, But I think families back then were often very secretive and protective about their heritage and their bloodlines because they felt they needed to be. That's one of the fascinating pieces about this story, right? Because by 1928 or so, everybody knew that Aimee Henry was Mary Martha’s illegitimate daughter – it had been splashed all over newspapers by that time – yet Mary Martha refused to admit it. It just seems so odd, but I think they felt it was their duty to maintain what they and society defined as a high standard of privacy when it came to family matters.
TIBBY
It's interesting. The only “high society” family member in my ancestry is Harland, I can trace him right back to royalty, and when I compare him and his beliefs to the rest of my family – to the Iowa farm boy that came to New York, that was also a lawyer, also in New York City, who went to NYU, and all of that – they had very different beliefs and were different in so many ways.
LORI
And that “high society” culture seemed to be so distinct from anyone else. I mean, different from the nouveau rich, the old money New Yorkers versus the new money New Yorkers. They represented the American aristocracy, and they needed to uphold these values that they had, in many ways, established themselves. It’s all very interesting.
TIBBY
My grandmother, Harland’s daughter, for her it was very important to speak properly. I certainly felt that. You don’t say you're sick. You say, “I feel unwell”. As an example, Harland had an argument with my grandmother in regards how to pronounce “Forsythia”, so just the way you spoke was so important to them, because it portrayed their class and status.
That aspect of [high society] got passed down to me, I mean, we ended up without money, but my mother made sure that she passed down that duty to maintain what she defined as a high standards and appearance. Appearances were huge, and I think that’s just exactly what Mary Martha was doing to protect her character, and the perception of herself and her family.
LORI
Exactly. So let's get back so Mary Martha. When did you first hear about her?
TIBBY
Well, I never did. I never did until my mother passed away, and I started digging into ancestry, which is how you and I connected. I dug and I dug and I dug and I asked my aunt about whatever was going on, because I didn't know anything about it. And all she said to me was, “Harland was involved in a terrible scandal,” And that was it. And that was probably what she had been told, too. She didn't seem to know anything about it.
So I continued to dig and then I found an article. Harland had died on the beach in the afternoon one day, and what I alluded from that was that he was having an affair, and he must have had an illegitimate child! And that's what I believed.
I kept digging and found some of those [1948] articles about the Mary Martha story and how Harland was connected. And then I let go of the thought that he was having an affair on the beach, and that he had an illegitimate child. But, yes, for a long time I thought Aimee was his illegitimate child because I didn't know anything, and because no one had passed any information down.
I mean, all my aunt would say was, “Harland was involved in terrible scandal”. So then I had to find out what the scandal was. And of course, you jump to conclusions. So for sure. I thought maybe Mary Martha was his mistress.
LORI
I can see how that made sense. Harland and Mary Martha had known each other for more than 20 years. I’m sure that relationship looked a little odd given how little information you had.
TIBBY
I assumed, my God, my high society great-grandfather had a mistress and an illegitimate child, and it was in the newspapers…
LORI
And nobody in the family wants to talk about it.
TIBBY
So, thank heavens. I kind of connected with you and dug deeper and realized Harland was really a very good man, not a bad man, after all.
LORI
For sure he was one of the good guys. You know, my sweet husband, he knowns every story and all the background to every story I’ve ever written, so we’ve talked at length about your great grandparents in relation to Aimee and Mary Martha. I admire them both so much. The court records are very clear that Harland told Florence well before he died that he was going to be getting a large amount of money in Mary Martha’s will, and that he had agreed to distribute it to her two illegitimate children. And he did that, I think, to prepare her for the scandal that was headed their way. I mean, imagine what family, friends and associates, not to mention total strangers, concluded when all of a sudden Harland inherits something like $400,000 [about $7.3M today] from a high society dowager. Talk about a scandal!
Harland knew Florence was going to be publicly, and probably privately, humiliated because people wouldn’t know the truth, so they’d jump to conclusions. But he wanted her to know the truth so they could survive the storm. I mean, what a testament to their relationship, right?
As my husband and I have talked, Florence is really the hero of this story in so many ways. Yes, it could have gone completely sideways, especially after Harland’s death, But, instead Florence’s integrity and her willingness to trust that her husband knew what he was doing when he signed that document, really showed her character, strength and grit under some truly awful circumstances.
TIBBY
You've turned my whole opinion of Florence around to a good thing. People kind of talked about her. She was overweight and she was lazy, and she was very abrupt. She came from simple means. Her father was a grocer, and her parents lived with them all their married life. When I saw that in all the documents, I thought Harland was a hero just to put up with his in-laws!
LORI
Yeah, that's a big ask, right? I'm so happy that the heroic role your grandmother played in the scandal around Mary Martha’s will has finally been told, and I wonder if maybe your family would have been more willing to talk about the whole thing if they had understood what really happened. But my guess is that they just didn't want to talk about it at all, whether they knew the truth or not.
TIBBY
I think Florence kept the whole thing very tight lipped, and I don't think anyone even knew what had taken place. I never heard a word of it growing up. My mother never mentioned it to me, she didn’t want to. She was bred to that. She didn't want to go back and look at anything in the past.
And the other thing I want to say to you, before I forget, is that I told [other family members] that I was talking to you about this, and not a peep out of any of them. Basically, they said, “just let them rest in peace, please”. They didn't want to be involved at all, which I guess just shows how inbred that was.
The other thing was your title, “Call Me a Bastard”. Not in today’s age, but I remember when the word “bastard” was used in my home, I probably had my mouth washed out , so for the women of that earlier generation, I think it was too much.
LORI
I get it! The word had a terrible stigma and is definitely jarring even to me. I really went back and forth a long time about using “bastard” in the title, but Amy used it herself. She claimed it. There were banner headlines saying she wanted to “be declared a bastard”, not an illegitimate child, a bastard. And I thought, you know, that really puts the story in context. Here's this huge, ugly label of the day that this woman is asking the courts to put on her so she can finally know who she is and where she belongs. It speaks to Aimee’s desperation, and also Mary Martha’s cruelty.
I think one of the most heartbreaking and pivotal moments of the entire story is when 16-year-old Aimee asks Mary Martha who her parents are, and Mary Martha says they were never married, they’re dead and the stain of their sin will be on her forever.
Who says that to her own daughter?
TIBBY
Aimee’s story just breaks my heart. Like a human being could turn their child out like that.
LORI
That’s the thing, right? On one hand you have Aimee’s lived experience. Every time she would start to feel like she belonged somewhere, Mary Martha would do something to destroy that sense of belonging. And it was so intentional and hateful.
Yet, in all the legal documents after her death, Mary Martha’s legal team consistently said this same woman loved her children so much that she was willing to give them money and financial security, but only as long as nobody ever knew about it. And I mean, I just can't reconcile those two things in my head. And throughout the whole research, I kept trying to figure out, how do you do that?
TIBBY
How do you do that? I look back at older generations, and I think they did have a very, very deep love for their children, but [they also believed] children should be seen and not heard. I remember hearing that belief from my grandparents and my mother, and that doesn't exist anymore. I think the love was there, but they just couldn't show it. It was too dangerous for them.
LORI
That's a good point. For Mary, Martha, I'm sure she felt it was very dangerous for her to show any weakness or sentiment toward Aimee, or her other child either, for that matter, even though no one knew she existed.
TIBBY
Yeah, she would have lost everything. She would have been sent out in the world and been a poor person, been rejected, and all her family and their wealth wouldn’t have protected her.
LORI
Exactly. Let's move on and talk a little about the difference between intentionally hiding something and just wanting it to stay private. Do you think your family was intentionally keeping the secret surrounding Mary Martha’s will and the scandal it created, or was it just that they were very private about it?
TIBBY
I think Harland and Florence didn’t really share much private information. And they didn’t dig into the past. I mean, my goodness, if my elders were like me and the way I dig into family, I would have had my hand slapped. Well, I have had my hand slapped! “Why are you bringing that up?” I mean, even when I talked about interviewing with you and asked, [family members] if they would want to join us, their answer was, “just let them rest in peace. Let's not go there”. I think family served as a form of moral restraint, and it was instilled almost into their blood and genes, and passed down generation to generation.
LORI
And from a very early age. Plus, kids weren’t in the rooms where those kinds of private adult conversations were taking place. Maybe they overheard the maids or family members gossiping about something, and they caught bits and pieces, but never the whole story, or at least enough to remember. There was a desire for separation between the generations, with hard and fast lines that didn’t get crossed. Very different times, for sure, and I think that's part of the allure of the story too, is because that was such a different time.
Let’s keep moving and talk a little about the value of tracking down family stories. On a personal level, what has it meant to learn more about your family’s history, not just the Harland and Mary Martha story, but, the whole process that you've gone through digging into your family's history?
TIBBY
Well, for me, it's so special. It just gives me great understanding of who I am and where I came from, looking back in both directions, but especially back to the Harland Tibbetts line, because that was my mother's line.
So a lot of Harland’s values went to my grandmother, which went to my mother, which are still in me. For example, chewing gum was not allowed in our family, it was considered ill-mannered and therefore horrifying. And, still today, when I see somebody chomping on their gum, I go crazy! My therapist says it generational. I’m horrified because my mother and grandmother and Harland all found chomping gum horrifying. So, [learning more about my family history] helps me to understand why I am what I am.
LORI
Absolutely I echo that 100 percent. I didn't really get into genealogy until after both my parents had passed away. I just I felt like I was really untethered, and I didn't know where I belonged, even though I still had family around. But, in connecting with family and family history, and going back and finding out all those kinds of things, I’ve realized that so much of who I am is a result of who they were. It might just be a matter of connecting random dots to see patterns, but some of the experiences that my ancestors had, those experiences and their ways of thinking and doing life ended up inside me.
TIBBY
I think it is in our genes. I've read a book, It Didn’t Start With You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle by Mark Wolynn, and it talks about that idea. Even though I never met Harland Tibbetts, my values of things like speaking correctly and dressing correctly and standing up straight come from someplace, because they’re so important to me.
LORI
That’s one of the reasons I’m so passionate about family stories and genealogy. It’s such a great way to expand how we think about our habits, our values and beliefs, even the way we talk about things, as part of a continuum. There’s so much to learn. Plus it’s just loads of fun, right?
TIBBY
It's interesting. Four years ago, I made this Patterson-Tibbetts book just to save all my information, but [a family member] totally rejected it. She was like, “What is this?” And it's just really odd, but I was so hurt that she wasn’t interested [in learning more about our family history].
LORI
I find that a lot. You look around the genealogy community and there aren't a lot of, you know, 20-year-olds doing this. And I get it. I remember being in my 20s and 30s, and I had a lot on my plate. But the older I've gotten, the more important learning about my family history has become to me. I want to preserve the old family stories, and share the ones being made today, hopefully making it easier for the next generation to understand where they came from and how they got to be who they are.
TIBBY
That’s terrific. I think [preserving family history] is a gift to everyone. Not everybody feels that way. But hey, I do! Your work and this story have inspired me so much. And you've put a lot of things together for me. I'm still very proud of, even more proud of, Tibsa for sure, and Founcie, too. And I thank you so much.
LORI
And thank you. It has been a delight, and I’m so glad you responded to that random DM back in 2021!
Copyright 2024 Lori Olson White
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I was blown away by this interview! Just ordered Mark Wolyn’s book. There are many more nuggets for me to note and think about. Great post!
Interesting that he married outside of his family's social group and married a grocer's daughter instead of a socialite. That takes courage to go against the norm especially back then when status was so important.