Chapter 9: The Rollercoaster

Aimee's Marriage and John's Career

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Release Date: August 19, 2024

Aimee Henry was still adjusting to her new reality as Mary Martha Parker's illegitimate daughter when she learned from Amelia Wright that her father was her mother's cousin, Allen Thorndike Rice.

Not that the name meant anything to Aimee. Allen had been dead 25 years by 1914, and beyond the occasional mention in a look-back article in regional papers, his name had disappeared from public memory. It's doubtful Aimee knew anything about Allen besides what Amelia had told her.

But that had been a lot.

Inaccurate at best, an outright lie at worst, Amelia's story had all the markings of a Shakespearean tragedy: Romeo and Juliet's forbidden love, the tragic death of Cordelia, the hauntings of Hamlet. In this version of events, Mary Martha was, if not a victim, at least a sympathetic character forced by society's cruel rules to give up both the man she loved and his child to protect the reputations of their families.

It was a powerful and emotionally manipulative story to tell a pregnant woman who had already experienced so much confusion and uncertainty about who she was and where she belonged.

As a child, Aimee had been intentionally kept in the dark about her parentage.

At 16, she'd been told her parents were dead, and she was illegitimate.

At 21, she'd been told Mary Martha was her mother.

Now, at 23, just as she was seeing a future where she belonged, she was being told her father was dead, and he and her mother had been cousins.

The rollercoaster ride must have become overwhelming.

At some point, however, Aimee began to focus on how the new information about who she was might impact the child she carried and her marriage.

Despite a growing understanding of genetics, there was still a common belief that children born to blood relatives were more likely to have mental and physical deformities than those born to unrelated parents. And that belief likely weighed heavily on Aimee's mind. How would she cope with, care for and protect a child with special needs?

Could she bear the guilt of hiding them away at an institution? Of abandoning them the same way she had been abandoned and left to survive on her own? The inevitable shame?

And what about John? He was building respect and recognition in the competitive field of electrical engineering, and on his way up the academic ladder at prestigious Columbia University. How would such an intelligent and ambitious man react to having a child with potential limitations?

Would her blame her?

Would he abandon her and their child?

In the end, Aimee made the difficult decision to tell John what she knew: She was the illegitimate child of Mary Martha Parker and her cousin, Allen Thorndike Rice.

John’s immediate reaction to Aimee’s confession was likely fueled by anger and indignation, and a deep desire to protect the career and reputation he’d spent years building.

No doubt, he had been betrayed. His wife was not who he thought she was – a woman of substance and good breeding who could help him create a narrative of social and professional success. In the unsettling news of her true position, Aimee suddenly became a liability.

She may also have become less valuable.

Generational wealth wasn't passed down to bastards. Inheritance laws didn't recognize illegitimate children as heirs unless their parents had already publicly recognized them as heirs — and Mary Martha had clearly never recognized Aimee as anything other than a burdensome charge.

It may have become painfully clear to John that the wealth and privilege he’s seen and experienced at the Taylor house would never pass to his wife.

And then, of course, there was the issue of his child.

A meeting was quickly arranged between John, Mary Martha, and Mary Martha's high-priced Manhattan attorney, William Travers Jerome, to discuss Aimee's parentage and, it can be supposed, any rights she and her child might have as Mary Martha's blood descendants.

No known records exist of what was said or took place during that meeting, and Aimee was not in attendance.

She would later say, however, that John told her Mary Martha admitted she was Aimee’s mother, but denied Allen Thorndike Rice was the father, instead claiming he "may have been one of several boys at some settlement I was interested in at the time." ¹

In a pattern that would become familiar in the coming decades, a financial arrangement was made to compensate John for his trouble and ensure Mary Martha’s secret was protected. In later years, Aimee would point to mysterious payments which began to appear soon after this meeting as proof of John’s complicity in keeping her mother’s secret. ²

On March 31, 1914, Aimee and John welcomed a healthy little boy they named John Harold Morecroft JR into the world. It must have seemed a dream come true to Aimee, who’d spent her entire life searching for someone who was wholly hers.

At the same time, however, her relationship with John was beginning to show signs of trouble. By all accounts a man of extreme intelligence and focus, John likely resented having been brought into Aimee’s family drama and becoming an accomplice to Mary Martha’s secret.

His response was to throw himself into work. By 1915, John had been named associate professor of Columbia’s prestigious Electrical Engineering department and was earning national and international recognition as an imaginative and visionary scientist in the relatively new field of radio engineering.

And as World War I raged across Europe, John’s technical prowess would be put to the test.

Although the US didn't officially enter World War I until April 6, 1917, American scientists were called upon to support the Allies years earlier, especially when it came to combatting German submarine forces, which were wreaking havoc on the British Navy and international shipping lanes.

At the time, submarines were undetectable until they surfaced. And by then it was too late. The Allies needed some way of knowing where the German subs were ahead of time — and radio waves seemed to be the answer.

As experts in the area, John and several of his colleagues at Columbia University volunteered to teach submarine detection techniques at the Navy’s submarine school in New London, CT as early as 1916.

Over the next two years, John would make several trips to France and England, where he and other scientists were involved in essential and top-secret work on submarine detection technologies, including the development of a supersonic echo method, which laid the groundwork for future technologies in the field.

In December of 1918, the first official report on American-engineered submarine detection devices and technology came out, and although no names were mentioned, the achievements of John and electrical engineers like him were impressive:

“Since the United States became a ‘belligerent’, the magnitude of the engineering work of the navy, both mechanical and electrical, not only in its actual amount but in the rapid development of facilities for its execution – has been without parallel for the same period of time in the history of the world’s navies.”

It went on to note that, “previous to July 1, 1917, there were two devices for submarine detection in service…Since then, eight other devices for submarine detection have been developed and made in quantity, not only for our navy, but for the British admiralty and the French Ministry of Marine. Modified forms of these devices have also been designed for use in protection of the Atlantic coast of the United States.” ³

While her husband helped save the world, Aimee concentrated on raising her young son, a task which, given her background, may have been more difficult than she anticipated. After all, Aimee had no frame of reference for what family life was all about or even what a healthy parent-child relationship might look like. She'd never experienced either.

Which begs the question, was that the plan all along? Did Mary Martha decide early on that her illegitimate daughter would be raised by strangers in the cold confines of elite boarding schools, or had there been a different plan, one that — for some reason — never panned out?

And if there had been a different plan, what might it have been?

Copyright 2024 Lori Olson White

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Chapter Endnotes

¹  “Lonely, Loveless Childhood Recalled by Woman who insists ‘Aunt’ is her Mother”, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, September 30, 1928.

² International Feature Service, Inc. Great Britain, “Astonishing Secrets behind the Morecroft Fight for Millions — and the Bar Sinister; Sworn Statement of the Dainty Divorcee that She is the Natural Daughter of Rich “400” Widow, Whose Vast Estates She Would Share after Harrowing Experiences in Schools, Hospitals and Sanitariums while kept in the Dark,” Star Tribune, November 25, 1928.

³ “One Navy Bureau Spent $777,000 a day During War: Division of Steam Engineering Reports that Month before Armistice was Signed Navy had 1959 Vessels; 7 Repair Bases on Foreign Soil: First Official Report Given Out Regarding Submarine Detection Devices Adopted by United States’, Rutland Daily Herald, Rutland, VA, December 13, 1918, P 1.