E. Jean Carroll, Maria Halpin, and the historical record

History is always biased when a human decides what gets included, and who gets left out.

A sketch claiming to depict Maria Halpin, as it appeared in an 1884 anti-Grover Cleveland pamphlet. Courtesy: Library Company of Philadelphia, fair use.

Donald Trump wants to be Grover Cleveland.

Even as the 45th president was forced out of the White House in January 2021, he was promising his return. Only one president has pulled this off — unseating the very man who unseated him four years earlier — and it was Cleveland. Voted out in 1888, voted back in in 1892.

Trump mirrors Cleveland in a few ways already. Both were privileged New Yorkers elected on “outsider” platforms, promising to shake up D.C. corruption (real or imagined); both had nontraditional first-lady stand-ins (sister Rose Cleveland and daughter Ivanka Trump, respectively) and actual first ladies many years their junior (Frances Cleveland, 27 years younger, and Melania Trump, 24 years younger).

And both men have been credibly accused of rape.

While running for his first term, in July 1884, Cleveland was accused of fathering an illegitimate child with a widowed clothing store clerk in Buffalo a decade earlier. The rumors swirled for months with just about everyone commenting on it, save Cleveland and the woman in question. By the time Maria Halpin broke her silence in late October, saying the encounter was “by force and violence and without my consent,” Cleveland’s surrogates had thoroughly destroyed her reputation — calling her an insane, drunken whore who had seduced several men at the same time that she was sleeping with Cleveland. He wasn't even sure of the child’s paternity, his surrogates claimed, but had selflessly provided for the boy to protect the other men, all married, from shame.¹ Cast in this light, many voters — all men, of course — came to view the scandal as a net-positive in Cleveland’s favor. He won the election.

Trump hasn’t been as tactful with his public smearing of E. Jean Carroll, the writer who says he raped her in a clothing store in the 1990s. There are no Trump surrogates whispering about her to journalists “on background,” just Trump telling anyone who will listen that Carroll is “a whack job,” “totally lying" and “not my type” — asserting, essentially, that she wasn’t attractive enough to rape, even as he mistook a picture of her for one his ex-wives.

Last May, Trump was found liable for sexually abusing and defaming Carroll under a New York law passed in the wake of the #MeToo movement. He didn’t attend that civil trial and has continued to shitpost about her from his custom-built high-chair, TruthSocial. This week, he decided to show up to a second civil trial based on an earlier defamation lawsuit Carroll filed while Trump was still president, and on Wednesday was there for Carroll’s testimony about the incident.

Before Trump’s harumphing sucked the oxygen from the room, Carroll’s words shot all over the internet. “I spent 50 years building a reputation,” she testified. “Now I’m known as a liar, a fraud, and a whack job.” Soon, she was quoted in news outlets the world over; eventually her entire testimony will make its way to a digital court transcript, where it will live forever, or as long as the internet lasts.

That’s good, whether or not you believe her — for women and for the historical record. (And for that record, I believe her.)

History, at its most basic level, is a summary of available information produced by a person. Ideally, that person is committed and trained to collect, analyze and summarize the available information in a manner resembling what actually happened. But even then, records and evidence and people can be destroyed, and the person summarizing what remains must make decisions on what to leave out, what isn’t important enough to include — decisions that will always be biased, consciously or not.

With the proliferation of Carroll’s testimony, the chance increases that her version of events will be harder for the producers of history to ignore.

Not so for Maria Halpin.

In late October 1884, Halpin released a sworn affidavit, saying, “The circumstances under which my ruin was accomplished are too revolting on the part of Grover Cleveland to be made public.” Then, she made it public anyway, releasing another sworn affidavit with more detail. Cleveland, who was in 1873 the sheriff of Erie County, had taken her to dinner, she said, and, upon walking her back to the boardinghouse where she lived, forced his way into her room and raped her. Nine months later, after birthing a baby boy resulting from the attack, she threatened legal action; she was soon arrested on specious grounds and sent to an insane asylum. When she got out, she found her baby had been taken to an orphanage. Her attempts to get him back failed, and he was subsequently adopted by a prominent local family.

A few newspapers summarized her story as I have above, even fewer published her words in full. (Smithsonian Magazine has a good rundown of how the scandal played out in the media.)

But Cleveland won the election, and the writers of history soon began summarizing Halpin into oblivion. By 1920, a Cleveland retrospective in The Atlantic gestured to the incident like this:

• “The campaign was ugly, saturated with abuse and scandal.”

• “When Cleveland’s youthful morals were impeached and he said at once, ‘Tell the facts,’ he won more votes than any possible subterfuge could have gained for him.”

The ugliness of the man’s alleged behavior is transformed into the ugliness of bringing it up at all, and the word “youthful” minimizes and misrepresents it. Cleveland was in his late thirties at the time of the alleged rape.

As recently as 2012, a respected historian characterized the incident as Cleveland “having sired a child with the unmarried Maria Halpin.” He names her but does not give her — and her version of events — a voice. It is unclear if he knew she had one, somewhere, in the vast expanse of the historical record.

Even now, a Cleveland biography on the website of U.Va.’s Miller Center, a nonpartisan clearinghouse for presidential scholarship, goes into detail about the scandal without mentioning the allegation of rape, and it takes Halpin’s supposed “mental collapse” as fact, without mentioning that she was released from the asylum after a few days when a doctor determined she was not insane and had been wrongfully incarcerated.

In recent years, authors Charles Lachman and Patricia Miller have admirably revived Halpin’s story in their books (Buy their books!), but as far as I can tell, her affidavits are not readily available on the internet. After some digging, I found a photograph of a handbill on an auction website that includes her first affidavit in a side column. The second affidavit I found in a scanned copy of the Chicago Tribune on Newspapers.com. They are difficult to read and not keyword-searchable — in other words, easy for the writers of history to continue to miss.

So let’s correct the historical record. In honor of E. Jean Carroll, here is Maria Halpin’s rage-filled voice in her two sworn statements in their entirety.

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Note: Paragraph breaks and some of the punctuation marks have been added for readability.

First Statement

STATE OF NEW YORK, COUNTY OF WESTCHESTER.

Maria B. Halpin, being duly sworn says that: I reside at New Rochelle, in the County of Westchester, State aforesaid. I am the person whose name has been published in connection with that of Grover Cleveland as the mother of his son.

I have been induced to remain silent, while the disgrace and sufferings brought upon me by Grover Cleveland have been discussed and criticized by the public and the press, and I would most gladly remain silent even now but for the duty which I owe to my aged and afflicted father, my children and my sisters, to whom my troubles were unknown, until made public by publication a few months ago.

My duty to those relatives and to those friends who knew me before my acquaintance with Grover Cleveland, whose kind assurances of love, and sympathy, and confidence have reached me, compels me to make a public statement and denial of many of the statements which have been made public concerning me and my character and actions while in Buffalo.

I would gladly avoid further publicity of this terrible misfortune if I could do so without appearing to admit the foul and false statements concerning my character and habits, especially those made by Mr. Horace C. King, and published with alleged approval of Grover Cleveland himself.

These statements have been accepted by many journals as true, and appear to be the defence or excuse of Grover Cleveland for his actions toward and treatment of me, as well as his story as to my habits and character before and during his acquaintance with me.

I did not believe it possible that even Grover Cleveland could attempt to further blacken me in the eyes of the world and disgrace me and my people after all he had compelled me to endure for him and their sakes.

I deny that there was anything in my actions or against my character at any time or any place up to the hour I formed the acquaintance of Grover Cleveland, which either he or any other person can cast the slightest shadow of suspicion over me, up to that hour. My life was as pure and spotless as that of any lady in the city of Buffalo, a fact which Grover Cleveland should be man enough and just enough to admit, and I defy him or any of his friends to state a single fact or give a single incident or action of mine of which any one could take exception. I always felt that I had the confidence and esteem of my employers, Messrs. [unclear] & Best and Flint & Kent, and this I could not maintain if I had been the vile wretch his friends would have the world believe.

He sought my acquaintance and obtained an introduction to me from a person in whom I had every confidence, and he paid me very marked attention. His character, so far as I then knew, was good, and his intentions I believed were as pure and honorable.

The circumstances under which my ruin was accomplished is too revolting on the part of Grover Cleveland to be made public. I did not see Grover Cleveland for five or six weeks after my ruin, and then I was obliged to send for him, he being the proper person for whom I could tell my trouble.

I will not at this time detail my subsequent sufferings and the birth of our boy on September 14, 1874. But I will say that the statement published in the Buffalo Telegram in the main is true. There is not and never was a doubt as to the paternity of our child, and the attempt of Grover Cleveland or his friends to couple the name of Oscar Folsom or any one else with that of the boy, for that purpose, is simply infamous and false.

Attached hereto is a statement prepared and submitted to me by the friend of Grover Cleveland to sign. But I declined to do so because the statements therein contained are not true.

MARIA B. HALPIN

Signed and sworn to before me this 28th day of October, 1884,

CHARLES G. BANKS, Notary Public Westchester County, N.Y.

F.T. HALPIN, H.C. HENDERSON, F.S. RENOUD, Witnesses.

Note: In the handbill, a statement absolving Cleveland, which Halpin said she declined to sign, is included. The signatory “F.T. Halpin” is Halpin’s son from her first marriage, who was by then an adult.

Second Statement

STATE OF NEW YORK, COUNTY OF WESTCHESTER.

Maria B. Halpin, being duly sworn says: In addition and supplemental to the statement made by me yesterday, I further state that on the evening of December 15, 1873, while on my way to call upon an acquaintance by the name of Mrs. Johnson at the Tiff House in the city of Buffalo, I met Grover Cleveland, whose acquaintance I had formed months previous to that time.

The said Cleveland asked me to go with him to take dinner, which invitation I declined because of my prior engagement, but by persistent requests and urging he induced me to accompany him to the restaurant of the Ocean House, where we dined.

After dinner, he accompanied me to my rooms at Randall’s boarding-house on Swan Street, as he had quite frequently done from other times and where my son lived with me. While in my rooms, he accomplished my ruin by the use of force and violence and without my consent.

After he accomplished his purpose, he told me that he was determined to ruin me if it cost him ten-thousand dollars, if he was hanged by the neck for it. I then and there told him that I never wanted to see him again and would never see him and commanded him to leave my rooms, which he did.

I never saw him after this, until my condition became such that it was necessary for me to send for him, some six weeks later, to inform him of the consequences of his actions. He came to my rooms in response to my note which I sent him, and when I told him of my condition and despair by reason of it, he pretended to make light of it and told me that he would do everything which was honorable and right towards me and promised that he would marry me, which promises he has never kept.

MARIA B. HALPIN

Subscribed and sworn to before me this 29th day of October, 1884,

H.C. HENDERSON, Notary Public in and for Westchester County.

F.T. HALPIN, Witness.

1. Cleveland was a bachelor until his second year in the White House. One of the married men he was allegedly protecting was his late best friend, Oscar Folsom. When Folsom died in 1875, Cleveland became the ward of Folsom’s 11-year-old daughter. When she turned 21, Cleveland married her.