The lawsuit of William Cody

Philip Cody, the grandfather of Wild Bull Bill Cody, was one of the pioneers in Cleveland. He is from Massachusetts. He lived in Toronto, Canada for most of his life, where he became rich by running bars and speculating in real estate. About 1830 When Cody was 60 years old, his wife Lydia and their nine children 1 1 moved to Cleveland, a small village on the south bank of Lake Erie. According to the tradition of the Cody family, they moved here because of the political turmoil in Canada and the business opportunities in Cleveland. Cleveland began to prosper because of the construction of the Ohio and Erie canals between 1825 and 1832. At that time, Cody settled down on a 55-acre farm in Cleveland. (1845 became the town of East Cleveland, and 1872 merged into Cleveland) The farm is located 342 feet south of Euclid Avenue, just west of today's East 86th Street, and extends south to Quincy Avenue in Fairfax block of Cleveland today. Philip Cody has lived on this farm for nearly 20 years, and he continues to engage in real estate transactions, just like he did in Canada, many of which were conducted with his family who lived nearby. Around 1847, the year Lydia died, he moved in with his daughter Sophia. Sophia's husband, levi Billings, runs a pub near Cape Donne, only about half a mile from Cody's farm. A few years later,1850 65438+1October 2, Philip Cody died at the age of 80.

This may be the end of the story, except for two things that happened to Cody's family nearly 30 years after Philip's death. First of all, according to newspaper reports, Joseph Cody, the son of Philip Cody, lived with his father or nearby in the 1960s. 1878 1840s. Before he died, he confessed to his nephew Lindes Cody that he had forged a contract to defraud his brothers and sisters and their descendants. Secondly, the story of Joseph Cody's last confession finally reached the ears of Lindsay's cousin William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody, who has become one of the most famous celebrities in the United States at the end of 19.

Cody 1846, Bill Buffalo, was born near leclerc, Iowa. His father Isaac is one of Philip Cody's 1 1 children. Isaac came to Cleveland with other family members, but left the area around 1840, followed his brothers Elijah and Philip Jr. westward to Iowa, and finally moved to Kansas in 1854. Shortly after Isaac arrived there, he was stabbed twice in the chest while giving a speech against prolonging slavery in the state, and the injury never fully recovered. According to the biographer, when he died in 1857, his 1 1 year-old son Bill had to go to work to help his mother and four sisters. He became a truck and train messenger, a pony express rider, a bison hunter, and finally became a scout of the American army. By 1870, his achievements in the west attracted the attention of Edward Judson. He became Ned Bonderling and began to write a series of short stories about buffalo Bill Cody, which soon made him a household name in America. Cody took advantage of his new-found fame, and when he was not spying in the army, he began to play the leading role in the drama (called "the group"). His performances in these plays, based on his famous achievements in the western wilderness areas, further enhanced his reputation, especially in the east. Then in 1883, Cody, with the help of his publicist John Burke and others, created Buffalo Bill's Wild West, which is a TV series different from his plays. The protagonists in the play are all real cowboys. They participated in rodeo activities, re-performed buffalo hunting and performed marksmanship (including annie oakley in Ohio). There are also wonderful stunts performed on horseback (some are Adele von Orr Parker, who later created her own "Wild West Show" at Parker Ranch in Noel olmsted, Ohio), all of which are performed in outdoor venues. In the next 30 years, the performances of these programs will consolidate Cody's reputation among generations of Americans and have a great influence on the development of western films in the 20th century. Just in 1880, three years before Buffalo Bill Cody launched the "Wild West" project, his menstruation Margaret learned about Joseph Cody's alleged fraud. According to news reports, she conducted a two-year personal investigation on this matter. She traveled all over the country, studied her deeds, determined her heirs, and talked with her family and other people who knew Joseph Cody and Philip Cody's mental state and business acumen in the 1940s and 1940s.1At the beginning of 882, she contacted her nephew Buffalo Bill about this matter, not only because he was a celebrity, but also because she needed money to go to court. According to one source, Buffalo Bill agreed to fund the work. He later claimed that in order to help his four sisters, he spent $5,000 to save hutchins, Campbell and Johnson, a famous Cleveland law firm, whose office is in Blackstone Building, located in the northwest quadrant of Gonks Square, only one block away from the old county court. There, Cody's lawsuit will be heard by Judge Gerschom Barber, a famous jurist who served as a brigadier general during the Civil War. Soon after, Cleveland's major newspapers-The Merchant of the Plain, The Leader, The Herald and the major national newspapers-all had many articles claiming that Cleveland was about to sue some wealthy Euclid Street residents, and the famous Buffalo Bill Cody was the plaintiff in the lawsuit. According to different terms, the estimated value of the land Cody tried to recover for his sister and other heirs ranged from $300,000 to $3 million.

Cody's lawsuit was filed with the Court of Appeal of Cuhoga County on July 22nd, 1882. Philip Cody's 14 heir was named as the plaintiff, representing six of his 1 1 children, led by William Cody. (Among Philip Cody's remaining five children, one is dead and childless, two are accused of being involved in the fraud of the heirs, and the heirs of the other two, Elizabeth Casterd and Lydia odell, apparently refused to participate in the lawsuit, as implied in a letter to the editor published in the Cleveland Leader on March 1882+07. The defendants were named 65,438+004 Cleveland, and they were accused of being the landowners of a 55-acre farm when Philip Cody died in 65,438+0850. The defendants included four upper-class Cleveland families who lived or owned land on Euclid Street, which was one of the most famous residential streets in the United States at that time, if not the most famous in the world, but the rest of the defendants were mostly middle-class or working-class Cleveland people, and most of them owned or lived in houses on Lincoln Street (today's East 83rd Street is between Cedar Avenue and Quincy Avenue). The southernmost tip of this street will soon become a national enclave for Czech immigrants in Cleveland. They will appear in the gardens of Lincoln Avenue (today, (Central)) and Quincy Avenue within one year.

In essence, the plaintiff's liability theory in Cody's lawsuit is that 104 defendants directly or indirectly bought their land from thieves. In essence-this petition claims that Philip Cody Jr. and his brother Joseph fraudulently bought their father's farm in the 1940s-the law does not even admit that a real buyer's ownership was obtained from thieves. The petition also claimed that Joseph Cody and Philip Cody Jr. used their father's mental state to deteriorate, or forged a contract in their name, or induced him to sign a contract to transfer half of the old Philip farm to Joseph Cody's wife and the other half to Philip Cody Jr.' s wife. In order to get a remedy, the plaintiff asked the court to transfer six tenths of the benefits to them (because only six out of ten children or their children participated in the lawsuit), and these benefits were adjusted in each defendant's property according to the improvements made and the rent collected.

The plaintiff in Cody's lawsuit has never been allowed to try in an open court and provide evidence to support his allegations. On the contrary, their petitions were restricted by some procedural motions formulated by lawyers representing different defendants and defendant groups in the19th century, including several motions proposed by Ephraim J.Estep, a famous member of Cleveland Bar Association and a former resident of Euclid Street (see the story of Allen Sullivan's House), who represented 62 defendants, including Darius Kader. In essence, the defendant complained that the plaintiff's complaint did not present enough specific facts, from which the court could legally find these facts for the plaintiff. Judge Barber seems to agree with the substance of the defendant's motion. He gave the plaintiff two opportunities to correct the legal defects alleged in his complaint. When they failed to correct the legal defects that satisfied him, they rejected their request in May 1883. Today, even retired lawyers, it is difficult to determine the exact basis of court decisions. However, the plaintiff's lawyer, John Hutchins, said in an interview with Plain Merchant on July 23rd that the judge's decision was based on the argument of statute of limitations. This basically means that the time when the plaintiff is required by law to file a lawsuit on the grounds of fraud has passed before the lawsuit is filed. Cody's heirs appealed Judge Barber's decision to the Cuhoga County Court of Appeal (then known as the District Court), which confirmed the lower court's decision in 1885+ 10. 1887165438+10, an appeal to the Ohio supreme court was rejected on the grounds of "failure to submit printed records", which shows that Buffalo Bill Cody is tired of this case and is no longer willing to make donations again and again.

Except for the day when the plaintiff didn't get them in court, it should be pointed out that neither did Joseph Cody and Philip Cody Jr., both of whom died before filing a lawsuit. Although the dismissal of the case was a victory for the defendant, whether Joseph and Philip Cody Jr. really committed fraud and deprived other children and their heirs of their shares in Cody Farm remains unanswered. On this issue, it must be emphasized that, as mentioned above, Philip Cody made some real estate transactions with his family members in the 1940s, including his son-in-law William Casterd, john odell and Levi Billings. However, these people, or Cody's daughter they married, were not accused of fraud. Since William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody came to Cleveland and tried to take back his grandfather's 55-acre farm on Euclid Street, 130 years ago,

It's over. Unlike other historical stories about people or places in Cleveland, Cleveland has left almost nothing to commemorate or otherwise remind us of the lawsuit of Buffalo Bill 1882. But some places can do this. You can go to Lakeview Cemetery, where you can see the weathered tombstones of Buffalo Bill's grandparents Philip and Lydia Cody. Or you can drive along East 83rd Street, just south of Cedar Avenue, and see three houses on East 83rd Street at 2202202208 and 22 10, which were built at 1882 and were owned and/or occupied by the defendant in Cody's lawsuit. Finally, you can visit "Bill Buffalo" Cody, the website of the international Cody Family Association, which was founded shortly after William F Cody died in 19 17. It can be traced back to the time when Buffalo Bill Cody was a household name in the United States, when Euclid Avenue was one of the most magnificent residential avenues in the United States. When Buffalo Bill went to Cleveland to sue the rich residents of Euclid Avenue, it not only attracted the attention and interest of Cleveland people, but also attracted the attention and interest of the whole country.