Frederick L Bearce (1878 - 1965)

On April 5th, 1878, Frederick Bearce was born to parents, Noble Sullivan Bearce and Mary Ellen Blaine, in Allegan, Allegan, Michigan, United States, which is where we first find him, along with his parents, on the 1880 US Census. "Fred'k" is listed as a 2 year old white boy, living with his father, "Noble S Bearce", a 28 year old white butcher, and his mother, "Mary", a 22 year old white housewife.^[1]

On May 4th, 1885, Frederick's father passes away in Lagrange, Indiana. The death of "Noble S. Bearce", a 34 year old white man, is recorded there,^[2] and also back in Michigan, as "Noble S. Burce".^[3] The Michigan record adds that Noble's parents were "Wm H Burce" and "Mary Burce".

Mary Ellen, and the children, Frederick now having a younger sister, Ethelyn, born about 1884, don't seem to be on the 1900 US Census. "Ethelyn Bearce" first appears in Kane, Illinois, marrying "Frederick A Patterson", June 21, 1909. ^[4] She is 28 years old, and her parents are listed as "Noble Bearce" and "Marian Blaine".

Mary Ellen then reappears in 1910, in Benton Harbor, Berrien, Michigan, both on the US Census and the US City Directories. On the census, "Mary Bearce" is listed as a 52 year old white widow.^[5] Both of her children, and her new son-in-law, seem to be missing from the census again.

Frederick finally reappears on May 4th, 1912, marrying Marie Louise Dohlon, in Windsor, Essex, Ontario, Canada.^[6] There are some oddities on the record, but exact matches for his parents names, especially his father's fairly unique name combination, as well as later documentation of this couple, prove this is indeed Frederick Bearce. First, he's listed as 24, instead of 34. He will carry this lie on for one more state census, but on all later censuses his birth date will be back to about 1878. Second, he lies, and claims to have been born in Londonderry, Ireland. That will also revert back to Michigan, or United States, on future censuses. Thirdly, he is listed as "Frank L Bearce". The name change will stick.

As I said, his parents are listed, on his marriage record, as "Noble Bearce" and "Mary Blain". Franklyn, as I will be calling him from now on, is listed as a "Presbyterian" and "of Detroit". His wife, Marie, is also "of Detroit", but was born in Sweden. Her parents are listed as "Andrew Dolon" and "Louise Zeioglon".

The couple are then found, together, on the 1915 New York State Census, in Buffalo, Erie, New York, along with their son, "Mark", a 2 year old white boy, just like when we first met his father. "Frank Bearce" is listed as a 27 year old white steam fitter, born in the US. And, "Marie" is listed as a 35 year old white housewife. ^[7]

We next find them in Detroit, Wayne, Michigan, on the 1920 US Census. "Frank L Bearce" is listed as a 41 year old white steam fitter, and wife, "Marie L" is a white 41 year old housewife. Son, Mark, is missing, but there's a white 14 year old boy, listed as, "Harold A", who is also listed as their son. However, this boy would have been born some 6 years before the couple were even married.^[8]

In 1920, "Mark Carl Bearce" can be found with his grandmother, "Mary Bearce", visiting his aunt and uncle, "Ethylin" and "Frederic Patterson", in Sturgis, St Joseph, Michigan. Mark is listed as a white nephew, aged 6 years old. Mary is listed as a 61 year old widowed white mother-in-law. Ethelyn is listed as a 36 year old white wife.^[9]

Sadly, Mark Carl is said to have died in 1924, at the age of 11. 1924 is also the year that Franklyn's mother passes away, in LaGrange, Georgia (odd, seeing that her husband died in Lagrange, Indiana, hundreds of miles away). "Marian B Bearce", a white American, daughter of "James G Blaine" and "Nancy J Hoover", spouse of "M B Bearce", died July 10th, 1924.^[10]

On the 1930 US Census, "Frank Bearce", a white steam fitter, is living in Mt Vernon, New York City, with his wife, "Marie".^[11] The mysterious son, Harold, has disappeared from record.

Then, in 1933, Franklyn wrote, and deposited into the Library of Congress, his "genealogy".

Swimming Eel

"Franklin Bearce, who also used the name Elewaththum Swimming Eel Bearce, is an intriguing personality. He first appears in the Schaghticoke narrative when, in 1933, Bearce, then a New York resident, applied to the State Park and Forest Commission to be certified as a Schaghticoke Indian. Park & Forest Comm'n Minutes, 6/26/1933, 7/19/1933, 9/13/1933 (CT Ex. 2); STN AR, at 105. An investigation followed, and the Commission declined to recognize him as a Schaghticoke. (SN-V013-D0011). Indeed, although petitioner members later would follow his leadership, they did not accept at the time, nor presently, his claim that he was a Schaghticoke or that he was a Schaghticoke chief. STN AR, at 119; STN TCA, at 71. He had a strong interest in and was involved in various Pan Indian organizations. STN TCA, at 64, 71-72. With the Schaghticoke, he organized pow-wows, led group meetings, and initiated and took charge of the land claims pursued in the 1950s."^[12][13]

In 1935, The Genealogical Society of Utah, published part of that "genealogy" in their July issue of The Utah Genealogical and Historical Magazine, pages 99-100.^[14] The article states, factually, much that just isn't true. Franklyn was not accepted as a Native American. And, there is no diary anywhere to be found.

In 1938, Donald Lines Jacobus, who had been hired by a Bearse family member, to investigate the Native American claims, was given permission, by that family member, to publish his results, in his own magazine, The American Genealogist. Jacobus [thrashed the first 3 generations] of Franklyn Bearce's "genealogy".

In 1939, "Franklin L Bearce" and his wife, "Marie L", appear in the heart of Stamford, Fairfield, Connecticut, on the US City Directories, where he'll remain on records, until his death.

1939 - A powwow is held on the reservation organized in part by the Federated Eastern Indians League and Franklin Bearce, aka Swimming Eel, a non-Schaghticoke who became intricately involved with the tribe. The powwow lasts three days with over 250 Indians from 14 states expected.^[15]

Stamford is where we find Franklyn, on the 1940 US Census, as "Franklin Beerce", a white surveyor, with an high school education, who is working for the city. He is living with wife, "Marie". They claim they were living in Manhattan, in 1935.^[16]

1941 - A news report says the powwow held this year is sponsored by the Town of Kent under the direction of the Schaghticoke Reservation Council, Chief Grey Fox (Mohegan) Chairman. The report says 6000 non-Indians and 100 Indians attend. The powwow was held on the farm of Mrs. Eleanor Bonos who was writing a book on the history of the Schaghticoke. The governor attended and issued a proclamation for a day honoring the Indians. State transfers jurisdiction for Indian reservations to the welfare department.

In 1942, "Franklin Elemaththum Bearce", lists himself as unemployed, on the "old man's" draft registration.^[17] On the 1944 US City Directories, he's then a plumber.

15 Jun 1946, Chief Swimming Eel Scores White Father.^[18] Indian Chiefs Brand U.S. an Aggressor.^[19]

1946, Swimming Eel communicating with Eleanor Roosevelt.^[20]

17 May 1947, Swimming Eel Goes On The Warpath.^[21]

1949 - Bearce organizes a meeting of Schaghticokes on the reservation. The purpose was ``to discuss and transact legal tribal business." Seventeen people attended. They voted to file land claims with the Indian Claims Commission concerning reservation and nearby land, as well as the sale of Manhattan.

1951 - The tribe files the claim before the Indian Claims Commission.^[22]

1954 - Bearce variously claims to be tribal chairman,, ``Duke of Chartires," Past President and National High Chief, the League of Nations, and ``American Indian Aristocrat." His claim to be a Schaghticoke and the chairman of the Kent tribe is denied by a state official in the state welfare department. A meeting is held at the reservation which may mark the beginning of current hostilities between the factions. Earl Kilson, a reservation resident, resigns from the committee without explanation. Howard Nelson Harris, the grandfather of the current chief Richard Velky, is voted in to replace him. The meeting was held at the home of William Russell, the father of Alan Russell, chief of the rival Schaghticoke Indian Tribe.

1954 - Indian Claims Commission hearing declines to rule on the federal governments motion to dismiss the claim.

1956 -There are 13 residents including three non-Indian spouses on the reservation. They are Kilsons, with the exception of Nellie Zeneri Russell, the non-Indian widow of William Russell, the son of Elsie Harris (who died in 1955). Nellie Russell's children Alan and Gail lived with her. The two siblings lead the rival Schaghticoke Indian Tribe faction. Alan Russell and Gail Russell Harrison's children currently live on the reservation.

13 Oct 1957, Connecticut's Indians Watch TV and Fight Legal Battles.^[23]

In 1958, Franklyn was in contact with Lois Hamblin Golding, who eventually published part of Franklyn's "genealogy", yet again.^[24]

1958 - The land claim was dismissed in 1958 and an appeal was dismissed in 1959.

1958-1963 - Letters between Bearce and Theodore Coggswell highlight a conflict with Howard Harris in which Bearce says Harris's wife and son are trying to undermine his, Bearce's, work.. Bearce falls out of favor with the Harrises and Kilsons.

On August 9th, 1960, 83 year old, "Marie L Bearce", of Stamford, wife of "Fran", dies in Newtown, Fairfield, Connecticut.^[25]

23 Mar 1962, Buying Back from the Indians, by Robert F Kennedy, mentions Swimming Eel.^[26]

86 year old, "Frank E Bearce", of Stamford, widower of wife "Mari", dies on March 12, 1965, in Stamford.^[27]

And, of course few who knew him can forget the legendary Swimming Eel.

In a worn plastic folder, beside others stuffed with pictures, letters and legal documents, Alan keeps the legacy of a man who may be the most famous Schaghticoke interloper of all: "Elewaththum Swimming Eel Bearce," a man so audacious that he submitted his unpublished and questionable Indian history, "Who Our Forefathers Really Were," to the Library of Congress, where it is now on file.

This bear of a man, with an even bigger ego, who carried a battered typewriter with him wherever he went, arrived mysteriously in the 1930s and became a Schaghticoke tornado who moved in all directions over the next 35 years.

Writing letters and filing legal briefs from Hartford to Washington, organizing powwows and frightening children with his booming voice, Franklin Bearce cannot be dismissed as a con man; indeed, his work has been cited by the federal government as evidence of the tribe's 20th-century persistence.

"The Eel" remains a mysterious -- even revered -- figure, whose efforts united disparate, fighting tribal families and led to the modern-day Schaghticoke revival. Perpetually broke, he arrived from Mount Vernon, N.Y., and assumed what he believed was the appearance of a Schaghticoke, right down to the bogus Western Indian headdress he wore at powwows.

What Alan pulls from the folder is something akin to the Schaghticoke Magna Carta. It is a frayed and yellowed carbon copy of a typewritten land claim known to Schaghticokes as 'Docket 112,' a nearly indecipherable 60-year-old court brief submitted to the federal Indian Claims Commission seeking redress for the theft of thousands of acres.

"Eel's copy," Alan explains.

The challenge ultimately went nowhere. But it was the beginning of what finally led to the Schaghticokes' 2,000-acre land claim in the 1990s. Swimming Eel eventually wrote his own "autobiography" -- widely disputed by scholars -- detailing his Indian heritage.

He faded away in the early 1960s, finally rebuffed by real Schaghticokes who grew tired of his claim to be an Indian, his bravado surpassed by other Indian leaders.^[28]

The 13 Indian Princesses

Franklyn's "genealogy" was most definitely questionable. It contains no less than 13 Indian princesses. At every point in his family tree, where records didn't provide a surname for a wife, or some anomaly was present, Franklyn inserted an Indian princess wife, or mistress. Then, when he got his tree all the way back to England, he threw in a Gypsy princess for good measure.

Some people claim that the native heritage myth, came down different lines of the Bearse family tree, independently of Franklyn Bearce, but no one has come forward with an ounce of pre-1933 evidence, to support this claim. And, stories coming down different branches of the family, independent of each other, shouldn't come out exactly the same as Franklyn Bearce's account, or each others.

Princess 1, Rebecca Yount: The story Franklyn made up for his great-grandmother, Rebecca contained one of Franklyn's most audacious lies. First, he claimed his grandmother, Nancy Jane Hoover, was the daughter of Jesse Hoover and Rebecca Yount, the great-grandparents of President Herbert Hoover. Then, even though numerous Presidential historians, genealogists, and librarians, have researched the Yount family, and found it to be a Dutch Quaker family, Franklyn claimed Rebecca Yount was an Indian princess. She most definitely wasn't.

Rebecca Yount's ancestry becomes irrelevant anyway, since Franklyn's grandmother wasn't even her daughter. She was the daughter of Joseph Hoover and Rebecca Hooper, according to both her's, and her sister's, death records.^[29][30] Widow, Rebecca Hoover then married, second, Jesse Hand, not Jesse Hoover.^[31]

Princesses 2 & 3, through Mary Ellen Tuttle and her mother, Eliza Cockfield Parmalee: Although his ancestry claims can't be proved outright false, with these two, they can be shown to be unlikely, and numerous lies within the story surrounding these two princesses, can be exposed as fabricated.

Princesses 4, 5, & 6, through Margaret Ann Rowe: Here, Franklyn outright fabricates a wife, for John Rau. Everything points towards him doing the same for Matthias Rau/Rowe. The third couple there is no documentation of.

Princesses 7 & 8, through Freelove Canfield: Here Franklyn provides us with an Indian princess/servant/mistress, which is basically impossible to disprove, except through DNA. For the other princess, Franklyn provides us with a genealogical error.

Princesses 9 & 10, through Rebecca Baldwin: One princess is totally disproved, the other is linked to an already proven fabrication.

Princess 11, Mary Sissell: Proved false, by Donald Lines Jacobus, county records, and an impossibility created by Franklyn himself, restoring Zerviah Newcomb to her rightful motherhood.

Princess 12, Margaret, wife of Gabriel Wheldon: Proved false, by Donald Lines Jacobus, and also by the discovery of more family records, in Nottingham.^[32]

Princess 13, Mary Hyanno: Soundly thrashed by Donald Lines Jacobus, and nobody has presented any valid counter arguments, to Jacobus.