In conjunction with the traditional activities associated with Memorial Day, members of the Superior community each year remember the legacy of a stenographer from their community. Though she traveled the world looking after the interests of her employer, she never forgot her home town.
When Evelene Brodstone arrived in Superior in 1878, the town contained about 10 buildings and 50 inhabitants. The newcomers were welcomed by a community ambitious to grow, but the three-year-old Brodstone girl was no cause for special attention.
There was no reason to suspect Evelene would obtain a successful business career and eventually become the world’s highest paid woman executive with a salary of $250,000 a year in the 1920s. She would travel to Russia, China, Africa, Australia and South America to secure new business for her company and look after the company holdings.
And no one suspected the town would benefit so greatly from her success as to receive a hospital, a park and priceless antiques and treasures collected on her world travels.
Brodstone Visits in 1875
Evelene’s father, Hans Brodstone, first arrived in Superior in August of 1875. He had walked the last 20 miles to Superior from the train station at Edgar. He was lodged in the log cabin home of the town’s founder, William Louden, and shown a map of the planned town. Three years later he returned to Superior with his wife, daughter and son and plans of operating a general store. He soon became a village trustee but his health was poor and within three years of his arrival, he was dead.
As a student, Evelene worked hard and studied during the summer to make up grades. In 1890, at the age of 14 years, 10 months and five days, Evelene graduated from high school. The graduation was held in the opera house located on the second floor of the Fourth and Central building now occupied by GTA Insurance and Linda’s Treasures. The stage was decorated by the graduating class with rugs, easy chairs and potted plants borrowed from their homes and friends. Entrance to the Opera House was on the west end of the building and a fire escape on the north led down to Central Avenue. The stage was on the east end of the building.
Immediately upon graduation, Evelene left Superior to learn stenography at Elliott’s Business College, Burlington, Iowa. Following graduation from business school, she returned to Superior where she worked in several offices including those of the Guthrie Brothers Milling Company and the Henningsen Produce Company.
Gets Job in Chicago
In 1895, while visiting friends in Chicago, she learned of an opening at the Chicago stockyards. She applied and was hired at the salary of $12 a week. A part of each paycheck was sent to Superior for her mother to hold until it might be needed.
One day one of the company owners, called for a stenographer to serve in the place of his normal secretary who was ill and not at work. Only the new girl, Miss Brodstone, was available to answer his call.
Impressed with her ability, he asked the office manager to send in the girl from Nebraska whenever a stenographer was needed. And that day her salary jumped to $20 a week. In a letter to her mother, Evelene described the new salary as “big money.” The plain girl from Nebraska bought a city-made dress to be more presentable around the office.
The new job allowed her the opportunity to begin learning how the business operated. She studied the company minutes and other records and had a remarkable memory for detail. When a question came up, the answer was often on the tip of her tongue. Her superiors began to listen to her prompting voice.
She advanced rapidly and was soon offered a regular seat at the directors’ meetings and represented her employer when he was not able to attend the meetings.
Works in London
Later she was appointed auditor of the packing company and eventually became manager of the Chicago operation.
In 1897, the company headquarters was moved to London and an expansion of the company began. Evelene was called to London to help with the expansion. Her mother accompanied her to London.
As a director of the company, she traveled all over the world, opening new packing houses and arranging for new markets.
One such assignment took her to Russia during a time when cities there were paralyzed by rioting. When Evelene finally reached Moscow, it was on the first train to enter the city in two weeks. She sent her luggage to a hotel, but went herself directly to the Vestey branch house. While conducting her business there, her hotel was dynamited and several lives were lost.
Evelene lost her papers and her luggage but not the determination to finish her business. Once her business was completed in Moscow, she determined to go south into riot-torn Crimea, but transportation was at a halt in that part of the country. She waited a month in Moscow before finding passage on the first train south. There were few passengers aboard and Evelene was the only woman.
Once her business was finished in Crimea, she went by boat from Sebastopol to Constantinople and continued west by train.
Retires in Superior
In 1914, she retired from the company and returned with her mother and brother to Superior. The outbreak of World War I created a fresh need for her with the company and she returned to England.
Accompanied by her mother, Evelene traveled to South America and opened a packing house in Rio De Janeiro. In order that nothing would interfere with the shipments of meats, Evelene had a guiding hand in the development of the company’s Blue Star Line, a fleet of 40 ocean-going steamers.
More meat was needed to feed the British army and soon she went to Buenos Aires.
Then William Vestey, the company president, turned his attention toward Australia.
Evelene had a key role in this large development which involved millions of acres. Evelene was dispatched from London to New York on a fast liner. At the Pennsylvania Railroad Station, a special train was waiting. Evelene was the only passenger as the train sped across the country. At San Francisco a Blue Star liner was waiting. She was the only passenger and the liner took her directly to Australia.
In Melbourne, Evelene engineered the purchase of 6 million acres of land. After making the purchase, she traveled the unexplored interior. At night a body guard slept before her tent, a rifle by his side and a knife in his hand.
While in Australia, she arranged to plant hundreds of colonies on the land. The inhabitants were to raise cattle for the Vestey firm.
Retires, Marries Boss
After the war was over, she returned to Superior.
When she refused to return to work, William Vestey booked passage to Superior. He stayed two days with the Vestey family. On the third day he departed for London and Evelene departed for China, via San Francisco and the Pacific.
Vestey’s two top employees in that quarter of the world had died and the business there was in a turmoil.
Evelene went to the headquarters in Hankow, located about 1,000 miles up the Yang-tse river from Shanghai. It was one of the most important points in the Vestey system and steamboats regularly sailed between Hankow and London. At the head of this fleet was a great refrigerated steamer named the Brodstone.
Evelene arrived in Hankow in January. By May the affairs there were just about straightened out but a revolution broke out. She remained with the company in China until the revolutionaries were turned back. All the while, she kept one of the company’s steamers in readiness, in case of necessity.
She returned to London via Japan, Siberia and Russia.
On another occasion, Evelene stayed a number of weeks in the far interior of Venezuela, arriving there after a 1,000 mile steamboat trip on the great Orinoco River.
Several times Evelene attempted to quit and live with her mother in Superior but always a lengthy cablegram or personal visit from William Vestey brought her back to the company.
Vestey Among 7 Richest Men
William Vestey was now considered to be one of the seven richest man in the world. Because of the role he played feeding the British army during World War I and the millions he donated to war charities and other causes, he was elevated to peerdom in 1922 and given the title, “Lord Vestey.”
Instead of hiring a heraldic expert to trace his descent, he designed his own coat of arms. The resulting shield was a joke on the House of Lords, but solemnly accepted by them.
On one side of the shield stood sheep and on the other side a steer. In the middle of the shield were three eggs and an iceberg. These items symbolized the mutton, beef and poultry products Vestey sold and the iceberg symbolized his refrigeration systems. Above the coronet, suspiciously stuffed with apples, was a goat’s head and three stars which are said to have symbolized the bock beer Lord Vestey liked so well.
During the short periods of her retirement, Evelene entered wholeheartedly into the activities of her home town. She was the financial manager of the Superior Baseball Club and was a member of the golf club. She joined the Women’s Club and maintained the membership the rest of her life.
The late Mrs. Claude Shaw, a childhood friend, wrote, “She cared nothing about her clothing. She was a determined person, quick-tempered, full of ambition, good, generous, had a mind of her own, fair-haired, blue-eyed, a champion cyclist and a mathematical wizard.
When Miss Brodstone first met William Vestey, he was married. The first Lady Vestey died in 1923. About a year later Lord Vestey arranged to meet Miss Brodstone in New York. Three days later they were married.
Lady Vestey Remembers Superior
She went to London to live but was to play the role of benefactor to this community. Among the gifts were a concrete bridge in Lincoln Park and Brodstone Hospital. Two full blocks of land adjoining the park were given to the city as a bird sanctuary and children’s playground.
Lord Vestey died in December, 1940. Five months later on May 23, 1941, Lady Vestey died at Gerrads Cross on the outskirts of London where she had taken refuge from Nazi bombs.
In the opening months of the war, her letters telling of the war were regularly published in The Superior Express.
At her death, she directed her ashes be returned to Superior and her American estate be used to create an endowment fund for the hospital.
To her Superior friends the story of Lady Vestey’s life can be summed up in lines written by Willa Cather in tribute to Evelene’s mother, Mathilde Brodstone, “She had a high courage, a warm heart, a rich relish of life...she traveled far, but her journeys brought her home.”
To preserve her vision, her determination and her love for her home community, the people of Superior each year hold the Lady Vestey Victorian Festival.
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