The Franklin Institute Acquisition of the Bergdoll Wright Brothers Airplane
Within this article are links to The New York Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer stories about the Bergdoll Wright Brothers airplane.
Since December 1933, Franklin Institute records, press releases, and news reports attributed to the prestigious museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, have said the Bergdoll 1911 Wright Brothers airplane was donated to the museum by a museum volunteer who acquired it from Grover Bergdoll by “acknowledgment, letter, or exchange of letters, wire (telegram), arrangement, secured his permission, and through the efforts of” the volunteer. These acquisition explanations were repeated over the years so that the Bergdoll family, the press, and the public believed that Bergdoll had presented his airplane to the museum as a gift, and he did it in writing.
The Bergdoll 1911 Wright Brothers airplane today in the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
After seven years of searching for written airplane ownership transfer records (letter or letters) and failing to find them, the museum (in 2023) changed course. It said the airplane was not a gift in writing but an oral gift from Bergdoll to the museum volunteer, William Sheahan of Upper Darby, Pennsylvania. Furthermore, as I’ve reported in the book The Bergdoll Boys, about how Sheahan removed the airplane from Bergdoll property, the museum says it would not have wanted a written record of such a gift in 1933 because, at the time, all of Bergdoll’s assets and property had been seized by the federal government to pay German war reparations for his draft-dodging criminal conviction.
Below are just a few of the multiple documents the museum has long presented to explain how it acquired the Bergdoll airplane through a third-party volunteer.
Above is an undated but early Franklin Institute record of the Bergdoll Wright Brothers airplane, which says that Bergdoll “presented” his airplane to William Sheahan “by letter.”
Above is a 1930s Franklin Institute record indicating the Bergdoll Wright Brothers airplane was acquired from Grover Bergdoll in Weinsberg, Germany, by “acknowledgment sent to” Sheahan at his Upper Darby, Pennsylvania home. Note that whoever wrote this document misspelled Sheahan’s name. It also misstates the year the airplane was stored and the location of storage. Bergdoll mothballed his airplane in his brother’s machine shop at their Broomall, Pennsylvania farm in August 1913, hauling it on a truck from an emergency landing in a Dalia field in New Jersey. It remained there until December 3, 1933, when it was removed by Sheahan and taken to the Camden County Vocational School for restoration.
In December 1960, C. Townsend Ludington, a former assistant director of The Franklin Institute, wrote a lengthy article for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association’s AOPA Pilot newsletter describing his association with Orville Wright to celebrate the 57th anniversary of the 1903 Kitty Hawk flights. Ludington, a wealthy Gladwyne, Pennsylvania aviation businessman, had organized Ludington (air) Lines passenger service as the first shuttle airline between New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC. It eventually became Eastern Airlines.
The layout heading for C. Townsend Ludington’s Wright Brothers article in the December 1960 AOPA Pilot, the newsletter of the Aircraft Owner and Pilot Association, of which Ludington was a founder. Provided by AOPA member Paul Heintz of Philadelphia.
In the newsletter, Ludington wrote that his Ludington Line was sold in 1933, from which, research indicates, Ludington and his partner brother reaped an enormous profit. He then turned his professional attention to the new Franklin Institute Hall of Aviation after multiple years of lobbying Orville Wright to donate his 1903 Kitty Hawk flyer as a centerpiece for the Philadelphia museum’s aviation wing. The efforts failed, and the 1903 airplane eventually went to the Smithsonian in Washington.
Ludington wrote: “This was still young (the new museum) when William H. Sheahan, long a prominent member of the Aero Club of Pennsylvania, then working (as a volunteer) with the aviation section (of the museum), told me that much of the Model B Wright brothers’ airplane that had been flown in the Philadelphia Main Line area around 1912, was still in the Grover Bergdoll hangar and shop. Arrangements were made to inspect this. We found most of the old ship intact. Enough remained to eliminate guess work from authentic reconstruction. There was no sign of the engine.”
Ludington continued writing from his recollections 27 years earlier, “Bergdoll, from Germany, replied to our letter that he would gladly present this airplane to the institute. He regretted the engine seemed to have been stolen some years previously. “
This is perhaps the only reference to a collaborative effort between Sheahan and Ludington that they both lobbied Bergdoll through “our letter” to acquire the Bergdoll Wright Brothers airplane for the museum. In all other references I’ve seen, it was always portrayed as a “letter or letters” from Bergdoll to Sheahan.
C. Townsend Ludington on the Bergdoll Wright Brothers airplane in December 1934 and the time of its final flights. Franklin Institute image.
In his article, provided by AOPA member Paul Heintz of Philadelphia, Ludington goes on to explain how the Bergdoll airplane was taken from the Bergdoll “hangar” (it was Erwin Bergdoll’s race car machine shop) and restored at the Camden County, New Jersey vocational school. He said they obtained an “X license” for the airplane to be flown again, which it was, in December 1934, making it the last authentic Wright Brothers airplane to fly. However, photographs of the aircraft display the registration NR-14333, the N for North America, and the R for restricted. An X would have designated experimental. Nonetheless, it is not understood how they obtained a federal registration for the Bergdoll aircraft without a signed ownership transfer document.
Ludington made no further comments about how Bergdoll would have been contacted at his hiding location in Germany or their (Bergdoll’s, Sheahan’s, and Ludington’s) correspondence.
Charles Townsend Ludington died in 1968. For decades beyond his 1960 article, the Franklin Institute continued to attribute the acquisition of the Bergdoll airplane to Mr. Sheahan alone.
Above is a portion of a 2001 Franklin Institute press release (2016 download) saying the Bergdoll airplane was “acquired…through the efforts of Mr. Sheahan…”
The museum’s new (2023) explanation for how it acquired Bergdoll’s airplane, after 90 years of saying it was in a written agreement, is presented in the book verbatim.
As I’ve done in the book, I present issues created by the museum’s new explanation.
First, how could such a prestigious, world-class institution, even in 1933, accept the gift of a 1911 Wright Brothers airplane from a third party (Sheahan) without a written transfer document from the airplane’s owner? Did they take Sheahan’s word that Bergdoll gave him the airplane? Would the museum have relied on a simple and potentially non-binding third-party acquisition of an aircraft subject to federal inspection and registration? Furthermore, how was the aircraft registered with a new number for its December 1934 demonstration flights in New Jersey without a written record of its acquisition as proof of legal ownership?
Second, how could Sheahan, who flew a few times with Bergdoll in 1912 but hadn’t seen him in 20 years, have communicated with and acquired the airplane in December 1933 when Bergdoll was hiding in Germany, incommunicado with Americans and with a federal bounty on his head for draft evasion and escape from his U.S. Army guards?
Third, how could the museum in 2023 change its method of acquisition explanation to an oral agreement between Sheahan and Bergdoll when both men had been dead since 1956 (Sheahan) and 1966 (Bergdoll)?
Fourth, could the museum or Sheahan legally acquire the airplane from Bergdoll after the federal government seized his property and assets?
Also, in the book, through extensive research of Sheahan’s activities and my knowledge of how the media work, now and then, I’ve posited about the nature of an October 8, 1933 story (with photographs) in The Philadelphia Inquirer indicating that thieves were looting Bergdoll’s airplane in his brother’s abandoned machine shop just outside Philadelphia. It consumes an entire chapter in The Bergdoll Boys.
The Bergdoll family is now challenging the Franklin Institute’s long-held story of acquisition. It deserves answers to these questions. That’s why they’ve participated in a November 29, 2024, New York Times investigation into the museum’s change in explanation of how it acquired the Bergdoll Wright Brothers airplane.
Above is the Bergdoll Wright Brothers airplane on display at the Franklin Institute in the early years, when it sat on the floor of the museum’s Hall of Aviation. For decades, no information was displayed about its provenance and connection to the Bergdoll family.
Additionally, the family has also participated in The Philadelphia Inquirer’s December 8, 2024, story of the museum’s airplane acquisition. To the Inquirer, the museum responds with a statement, reading in part, “It was common knowledge that the airplane was at The Franklin Institute from 1934 on, and the government never made any attempt to collect the airplane in or after 1921 as part of its seizure of Bergdoll’s assets…”
During my extensive research, I determined that when seizing his property and assets in 1921, the federal Alien Property Custodian froze them (including cash in banks, mortgages, property deeds, etc.). Still, they did not physically carry away Bergdoll’s property. The seizure ordered that he not sell or dispose of his property and assets to generate cash to fund his life in exile or to transfer their value to another party out of reach of the government. Bergdoll’s seized property and assets were contested in the courts until well into the 1940s when the seizure was formally lifted.
The question remains. Suppose the Franklin Institute knew in 1933 that the federal government had seized Bergdoll’s property and assets. What legal right did it have, or did its volunteer, William Sheahan, have to take the airplane from Bergdoll’s property? It’s a complicated ethical and legal conundrum, and I presume it can only be resolved in the courts.
I’ve stated in the book that the best place for the world’s most original and intact Wright Brothers airplane is the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia, and in the region where it spent the two incredible years of its 748 Bergdoll flights without a mishap. The museum has been a responsible caretaker of the airplane, restoring it three times and consistently displaying it to the public, albeit with scant information about or attribution to the renowned Grover Bergdoll.
However, the Bergdoll family now pursues the matter as their choice. It’s time for the museum to open a dialogue with the family and secure a possession and display agreement that satisfies both parties.