All Good things Must….

By 1910, H.F. Chaffee was managing a million-dollar empire. He had built a complex commercial operation from the Connecticut company’s initial investment of $92,000. Dr. Hiram Drache states in 1964, “The Amenia and Sharon Land Company probably became one of the greatest organizations of American agriculture.” H. F. was at the helm, not only of a magnificent enterprise, but of a large and vibrant family as well. By 1910, he and Carrie were living with their five lively children, aged 8 to 21, in the grand mansion on Chaffee Avenue at the center of the prairie town of Amenia, surrounded with lilac bushes, cottonwoods and walnut trees. The town park was lined with stately elms, the Congregational Church and parsonage at one end of the park, and the village school at the other. Sidewalks and little boulevards connected the houses that sat along the small grid of village streets. The mercantile store and company headquarters, post office, hotel, livery and train depot were clustered across from the railroad tracks and the impressive elevators towered along the tracks at the eastern edge of town. It was a quintessential tiny prairie town of America’s Gilded Age.

It was decided that a grand European Tour would be just the thing. H.F. and Carrie booked their passage with Cook’s Tours on the RMS Cedric for the spring of 1912, Herbert planning to be back home in time for the major work of the season, and Carrie planning to hold their first grandchild upon their arrival home, as son Eben and his wife were expecting to deliver their first child.

The exact details of the decision to return early to the States aren’t verifiable, but family lore suggests that they were somewhere in Italy when they received a cable advising them to return for a hastily scheduled board meeting. We do know that from Naples, Cook’s booked their first-class return passage on the maiden voyage of the magnificent RMS Titanic, and they made their way overland through France, stopping briefly in Paris, and boarded the great ship in Southampton, UK on April 10. On the fateful night of April 14, Titanic struck an iceberg in the north Atlantic sea, and Carrie was placed into lifeboat #4, alongside Mrs. Madeleine Astor. Herbert F. Chaffee was never seen again.

Carrie returned to NYC aboard the rescue ship Carpathia, arriving on April 18. Her son Herbert Laurance and nephew Walter Reed were waiting at the pier, and hurried her away to their hotel, avoiding the press. They returned to North Dakota by train, leaving H. Laurance at Oberlin College, Ohio, on the way. From there, Carrie traveled with Walter Reed to St. Paul, MN, where she did indeed meet her newborn grandchild, as Eben and Dolly’s daughter, Carolyn, had been born three days earlier, on April 20. Carrie returned to Amenia that same evening, escorted by Reed, and began the long, formidable task of grieving the trauma and horrific loss of her husband, and of taking up the helm and forging ahead as the new head of the company. At a special meeting on August 31, Walter Reed was elected president and general manager of the parent company, replacing H.F., and Carrie was made its vice-president.

The Amenia and Sharon Land Company and its subsidiary corporations continued with great financial success, but the loss of the strong vision and leadership control of H.F. Chaffee was evident. By 1922, the books showed gross assets of $3,365,815.49, but the family stockholders were becoming invested in their own personal interests and enterprises, and the opportunity to sell off the land at the high prices commanded after the Great War was persuasive. There was also the encumbrance of increasing corporate taxes, which had been a great sore point with H. F. as early as 1911, and was continuing to burden the company. In April, 1920, after paying taxes totaling almost $55,000.00, and struggling with the individual interests of her family pulling in too many directions, Carrie offered a motion at a special company meeting to discuss taxes and dissolution, that “steps be taken to formulate some plan for individual ownership of the property of the land company.” This resolution was carried on February 1, 1921, and an initial plan was instituted by March, 1922. The property was distributed per a liquidation statement, Feb. 23, 1923, and the final meeting of the Amenia and Sharon Land Company took place on February 25, 1925. The great company was dissolved, and the empire was no more.

The stockholders, all grandchildren of E.W. Chaffee, except for Carrie T. Chaffee, his daughter-in-law and John H. Reed, his son-in-law, received as follows: Katharine Reed Brown, 3 sections; Robert B. Reed, 5 ½; Walter R. Reed, 8 ½; John H. Reed, ¾; Eben W. Chaffee, Jr., 4 ¼; Dorothy Chaffee Stroud, 5; H.L. Chaffee, 4 ½; Adele Chaffee Higgins, 4 ½; Lester Chaffee, 5; Carrie T. Chaffee, 12 ½ sections. Other assets, elevators and subsidiaries were similarly divided.

These days, over a century later, the little town of Amenia has become, basically, a bedroom town for Fargo. The elevators still handle local grain, and the blacksmith shop even survived into the 1960's. The General Store was renovated several times, and finally burned down in the late 1970's. In its place now stands the Dirty Gun Bar & Grill. The train depot is long gone, as is the church, the school, the hotel, and the gas station. The Chaffee mansion was torn down in 1920, soon after Carrie returned from a second trip to Europe with her two youngest children. The large cellar hole was filled in and is now overgrown, and only parts of the brick-paved carriage drive still remain.

Some of the Chaffee family stockholders stayed in the Amenia/Fargo area, and others had already moved with their families beyond the borders of North Dakota, claiming new horizons and breaking new ground. Thus is the way of history.

To read more about Herbert, Carrie and their family, click here for the Biography. To see more photos, click here for the Photo Gallery.

CHAPTERS OF OUR STORY

Introduction

Chapter 1: Chaffee Origins

Chapter 2: From the Mayflower to the Ousatonic

Chapter 3: From the Hills to the Plains

Chapter 4: E.W.C. and the A&S Land Company

Chapter 5: Herbert Fuller Chaffee - Genius of the Bonanza

Chapter 6: End of an Age