Ida Alice Shrouds Flagler

Ida Alice Shourds was born on July 4, 1848, at Little Egg Harbor, New Jersey, the daughter of the Reverend John Howard Shourds and Margaret Shourds. Her father was an Episcopal clergyman, and Ida was raised with her brothers and sister in a family far removed from the immense wealth and social prominence that would later surround her. She spent part of her early life in Philadelphia, and later accounts describe her as having briefly pursued the stage before entering nursing. Although the details of her theatrical career remain uncertain, she was remembered as a capable and intelligent young woman who eventually found employment as a nurse and companion.

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It was through nursing that Ida entered the household of Henry Morrison Flagler, one of the founders of Standard Oil. During the prolonged illness of Flagler's first wife, Mary Harkness Flagler, Ida served as one of her attendants.

Mary died in 1881, leaving Henry a widower. Two years later, on June 5, 1883, Ida Alice Shourds and Henry Morrison Flagler were married at the Madison Avenue Methodist Church in New York City. Ida was thirty-four years old, only weeks from her thirty-fifth birthday, while Henry was fifty-three.

Later that year the newlyweds traveled south to Florida, visiting Jacksonville and St. Augustine. The journey proved enormously important in the course of Henry Flagler's life and in the development of Florida itself.

St. Augustine captured his imagination, and during the years that followed he began investing heavily in hotels, transportation, and railroads throughout the state. Ida was at his side during the formative period of those enterprises and became an important figure in the social life surrounding them.

In St. Augustine the Flaglers maintained a residence known as Kirkside, and Ida quickly became one of the leading hostesses of the winter season. Her dinners, dances, and receptions brought together wealthy visitors from New York and other northern cities, including members of some of America's most prominent families. While Henry devoted increasing attention to the construction of the magnificent Ponce de Leon Hotel and the expansion of his Florida enterprises, Ida presided over a social world that helped establish St. Augustine as one of the fashionable winter destinations of the Gilded Age.

Kirkside

The Flaglers also maintained Satan's Toe, their estate at Orienta Point near Mamaroneck, New York, and traveled aboard a yacht named Alicia, apparently in Ida's honor. For approximately the first decade of their marriage there is little evidence that Ida was regarded by family or friends as mentally impaired. She enjoyed the privileges of immense wealth, entertained extensively, traveled with her husband, and occupied an increasingly prominent position in society.

By the early 1890s, however, Ida's behavior began to change. Like many men and women of her era, she developed an interest in Spiritualism and séances, but her involvement gradually became more intense. Contemporary and later accounts describe her as consulting mediums, using a Ouija board, and believing that she was communicating with spirits and prominent historical figures. She was also reported to have spoken openly about Henry's infidelity and to have become increasingly suspicious of those around her.

The most sensational stories concerning this period were repeated for decades and should be treated with caution. Later writers attributed to Ida a number of violent threats and elaborate delusions, but many of these accounts were written long after the events themselves and were based upon testimony supplied by doctors, members of the Flagler household, or those representing Henry's interests. What is certain is that by 1895 Henry and his physicians believed that Ida was suffering from a serious mental disorder.

During the autumn of 1895, Henry's physician, Dr. George G. Shelton, arranged for specialists in mental illness to examine Ida at the Flaglers' apartment at 685 Fifth Avenue in New York. Following the examination, she was removed to Choate House, an exclusive private sanitarium at Pleasantville, New York, operated by Dr. George C. S. Choate. Among the wealthy and prominent patients treated there over the years had been newspaper editor and presidential candidate Horace Greeley.

Ida's condition apparently improved sufficiently for her to leave the institution the following year. During the spring and summer of 1896 she returned to Satan's Toe at Mamaroneck, where she underwent what was described as a rest cure while attended by a nurse. Contemporary descriptions characterized her as greatly improved and at times nearly well. The improvement did not last, however, and after another deterioration in her condition she was returned to institutional care.

Following Dr. Choate's death in 1896, Ida came under the supervision of Dr. Carlos Frederick MacDonald, one of the most prominent alienists in the United States. MacDonald had served as president of the New York State Commission in Lunacy, taught mental diseases at Bellevue Hospital Medical College, and frequently appeared as an expert witness in some of the most celebrated criminal trials of his time. He diagnosed Ida as suffering from what was then termed incurable delusional insanity and would remain connected with her care for approximately three decades.

For several years the fact of Ida's confinement was kept largely from public view. Friends and acquaintances were often told that she was suffering from ill health, and newspaper accounts later reported that even some of those who had known her socially had been unaware of the true circumstances. Henry gradually withdrew from her life, and according to several later accounts he never saw her again after her permanent return to institutional care.

In 1899 proceedings were begun in the New York Supreme Court to determine Ida's legal competency. She was formally declared insane, and committees were appointed to supervise both her person and her property. At approximately the same time Henry Flagler established legal residence in Florida, where he was spending an increasing portion of his time.

The question of divorce soon became one of the most controversial episodes of Flagler's career. Existing Florida law did not permit divorce simply because a spouse had been declared incurably insane. In 1901 the Florida Legislature enacted a law making incurable insanity grounds for divorce after a specified period of confinement. The measure became widely known as the "Flagler divorce law" because of the obvious benefit it provided to Henry.

On August 14, 1901, Henry Flagler obtained a divorce from Ida in Florida. Only ten days later, on August 24, he married Mary Lily Kenan of Wilmington, North Carolina. The speed of the remarriage attracted national attention and strengthened longstanding gossip concerning Henry's relationship with Mary Lily before the divorce was granted. Contemporary newspapers openly reported that Henry and Mary Lily had been socially linked for some time, although the surviving evidence does not establish precisely when their personal relationship became romantic.

Ida's divorce did not leave her impoverished. Quite the opposite was true. Henry had previously transferred a substantial fortune to her, much of it in Standard Oil securities. An accounting of her estate in 1901 showed that she owned 2,420 shares of Standard Oil stock, then valued at approximately $975 per share and producing about $100,000 annually in dividends, in addition to other securities. Her wealth, administered under court supervision, continued to increase dramatically during the decades that followed.

Although Ida remained legally incompetent, her life after the divorce was not spent entirely within the walls of a conventional asylum. In 1902 Dr. MacDonald moved her from Choate House to The Orchard, a twenty-room waterfront mansion in New Rochelle owned by the actor Francis Wilson. The property included extensive grounds, stables, gardens, a tennis court, and a private theater. Ida lived there with nurses, attendants, and medical supervision.

During her residence at The Orchard, newspapers occasionally reported that she appeared to have improved and had regained some of her faculties. Some visitors considered her rational on many subjects. Dr. MacDonald disputed these reports and continued to maintain that her underlying condition was incurable.

By approximately 1904 Ida was living under supervision at 353 Riverside Drive in Manhattan. She was accompanied by nurses, household servants, and medical attendants, but she was permitted to leave the residence. Newspaper reports described her shopping, attending the opera, and participating in other ordinary activities of wealthy New York life. These reports did not overturn the legal determination of incompetency, but they suggest that her condition was considerably more complex than the simple image of a woman continuously confined behind asylum doors.

Ida continued to enjoy occasional outings in later years. In 1909 she and members of her household were returning from an afternoon of shopping, dining, and sightseeing when their automobile, a large Locomobile, left the road and struck a wall. Ida and her companions escaped with relatively minor injuries. As late as 1912 newspapers reported that she made regular trips to New York and attended the opera during the winter season.

By then Ida had been moved to Central Valley, New York, where Dr. MacDonald had acquired a private sanitarium known as Falkirk. After his purchase of the property in 1906, it became known as the Dr. MacDonald House. The institution was designed for wealthy private patients and differed greatly from the large public asylums of the period. Its extensive grounds included separate residences, cottages, gardens, walking paths, and recreational areas, and some patients maintained their own attendants and household staffs.

While Ida lived under supervision, her fortune continued to grow. Her Standard Oil holdings produced enormous income, and members of the extended Shourds family began receiving court-approved allowances from her estate. Brothers, a sister, nieces, nephews, and more distant relatives petitioned for financial support. Lawyers, guardians, physicians, trustees, and court-appointed representatives became involved in administering what had become one of the largest estates belonging to a legally incompetent person in the United States.

The cost of Ida's care was itself substantial. Dr. MacDonald received large annual payments for supervising her treatment, while additional money was spent on nurses, attendants, residences, transportation, legal fees, and family allowances. By the 1920s hundreds of thousands of dollars were being distributed annually from her estate, yet the value of her investments continued to increase.

Henry Morrison Flagler died in 1913, twelve years after their divorce. Ida, still living in New York under supervision, survived him by seventeen years. She also outlived Henry's third wife, Mary Lily Kenan Flagler, who died in 1917. Dr. Carlos MacDonald, whose diagnosis had shaped most of Ida's later life, died in 1926. Ida survived him as well.

By the final years of her life she possessed an extraordinary fortune. Contemporary accounts described her as one of the wealthiest legally incompetent women in the country. Her income alone reached hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, derived largely from the Standard Oil securities that had appreciated dramatically since the beginning of the century.

Ida Alice Shourds Flagler died on July 12, 1930, at Central Valley, New York, eight days after her eighty-second birthday. A private service was held at the sanitarium before her remains were taken to Cypress Hills Cemetery in Brooklyn, where she was buried in Section 6, Lot 797.