Sistersville daily oil review. [volume] (Sistersville, W. Va.) 1902-1905, 1904-12-07
Mrs. Chadwick
Has a Check
cred Career
Special to The Oil Review.

woman OIL lOWly oflSlu, WIN iohS
of the advantages that persons OF
even ordinary circumstances are
able to give their children in the
way of education and surround
ings, should at the age OF At be
able to astound every city IN
America and even set tongues a
wagging in Europe by her ability
to raise stupendous sums OF mon
ey on nothing much more sub
stantial than her bare word, seems
almost beyond belief. Yet that
is what Mrs. Cassie L. Chadwick,
known as Elizabeth Bigley, Alice
Bestedo, Nine. La Rose, Nine. De
We're and Mrs. Springsteen, has
done.
These facts would be amazing
enough in themselves if the wo-
man had in her youth given indi-
cations of exceptional brilliancy,
or had she in her prime been pos
sessed of great beauty. to charm
men. But that a woman whose
youth was clouded by squalor and
poverty and whose early woman
hood was spent in prison for the
crime of forgery should do all this
and in the end come out scOt-free
amazes and astounds.
Mrs. Cassie L. Chadwick was
born in Eastwood, Ontario, about
the year 1857, one of eight chill
dren of Daniel and Mary Ann
Bigley. In 1879, at Woodstock,
Ont, on the ground that she was
insane, she was acquitted of the
charge of forgery. She appeared
in Cleveland about 1882, and had
various experiences with money
lenders under the names Of Big
ley and Mrs. Alice Bestedo. On
October 81 of that year she mar
.ried DR.. w. S. Springsteen. They
had not been married a month be-
fore certain of her doings became
known to her husband, and she
was forced to leave his house. In
1888 DR.. Springsteen divorced
her. Three eyears later she again
turned up in Cleveland as Mrs:
Scott, and lived in a boarding
house kept by Mrs. Hoover, at
No. 122 Euclid avenue. In 1880
she, with an express agent, JOS
eph Lamb, was arrested in Toledo
on the charge of obtaining $751;
600 by forgery. On the plea that
Lamb was simply her dupe, Lamb
was acquitted, but she was con-
victed and sentenced to the Co.
lumbus penitentiary for nine
years and six months. Gov. Nc
Kinley released her on parole In
1898.
In the following year she again
appeared in Cleveland, this time
as Mrs. Hoover, having borrowed
the name of the clearinghouse
keeper with whom she formerly
lived. In 1887, still under the
name of Hoover, she wormed her
way into the affections of DR.. LIE
roy S. Chadwick of Cleveland, of
very old and respectable fam
lily, and he married her. 1t was
not long before her husband and
his daughter by a former mar
riage were forced by her erratic
conduct to leave the home of his
birth and seek oblivion in a for
eign land.
Despite the fact that all these
things have only just now been
made public, the woman's iden-
tity with the former convict,
Nine. De We're, has been known
to hundreds of Clevelanders for a
good many years, and despite the
fact that she has time and time
again been confronted with this
dark spot in her career by dozens
of Cleveland lawyers, and that
many times she has been forced to
disgorge large sums of borrowed
money through threats of expos
ure, yet up to the very last mo,
ment she has persistently denied
everything.
There is scarcely a lawyer,
banker or business man of any
prominence in this city who is not
more or less acquainted with her
life's history; yet it is almost i'm
possible to get any one of them
to speak of her or her affairs or to
acknowledge that they have in
any way been connected with her.
Theyare almost all willing to tell