Stolen engines. Stolen Parts. Vintage airplanes and cars removed from the Bergdoll farm.
Thieves, looters, and rescuers could easily get into the barn and race car machine shop at Erwin Bergdoll’s farm along West Chester Pike in Broomall, Pennsylvania from the 1930s through the 1960s. The vintage 1880s and 1915 buildings were nearly abandoned with broken doors and window glass, and Erwin, the last of the Bergdolls to live at the Broomall farm complex, eventually moved westward to another farm in Honey Brook, Pennsylvania to escape the press and public.
Although Erwin’s son, Erwin, Jr. squatted on the property for a time, no one was left behind to watch over the property or their valuable relics.
Today, the location of the Bergdoll’s Broomall farm is consumed by the Route 3/West Chester Pike interchange of I-476, known as the Blue Route in Delaware County, Pennsylvania.
Nothing is left to see of the Bergdoll farm.
Secreted by the wooded valley of Darby Creek at the northeastern edge of the Bergdoll’s farm, thieves and looters got into Erwin Bergdoll’s machine shop sometime in the early 1930s and stole the engine, radiator, and steering lever from Grover Bergdoll’s 1911 Wright Brothers airplane, abandoned in the shop in 1913.
The stolen parts were never found.
Then, in December 1933, after a photograph of the abandoned airplane appeared in an October 1933 newspaper article, the renowned aircraft was removed from the machine shop and restored at the Camden County (New Jersey) Vocational School with great fanfare from aviation enthusiasts including Orville Wright, himself. It was then installed in the Franklin Institute Science Museum in Philadelphia in January 1935, which claimed for 90 years that Bergdoll gave the airplane to a museum volunteer who then bequeathed it to the Franklin Institute.
The museum says it has no documentation of a written agreement transferring ownership of the airplane, as stated for decades in its press releases and other declarations about how it acquired the Bergdoll airplane.
In 2023, the museum rescinded its long-held statement of acquisition and declared the airplane’s gift was an oral agreement by Grover Bergdoll himself, in part, because Bergdoll’s assets had been confiscated by the federal government and that such an acquisition would not want to be made in writing. The museum still has the airplane today. It has taken excellent care of the relic but since the acquisition, it has provided scant details about the Bergdoll provenance of the airplane.
I explain this thoroughly in the book, The Bergdoll Boys.
With the Bergdoll’s Broomall farm complex (three separate properties owned by Emma, Erwin, and Grover) either abandoned or unattended, in the late 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s, antique furniture and furnishings, miscellaneous items, and more automobile parts were reported stolen and/or looted from the property. Another theft included the 3-cylinder Anzani engine from Louis Bergdoll’s 1909 Bleriot XI airplane, also stored at the farm. Then, reportedly through a tip from a West Chester, Pennsylvania man who knew the property, the late vintage airplane collector, Cole Palen of the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome in the New York State’s lower Hudson Valley obtained Louis Bergdoll’s 1909 Bleriot airplane from the Bergdoll farm.
The story of Palen’s acquisition of the Bergdoll Bleriot was told to me by the late Seth Pancoast, Jr., of Broomall, Pennsylvania, a wonderful man but one who declined to answer my pointed and specific questions about who did what and when. He said, simply, “things were done differently then.” He refused to elaborate.
Pancoast, Jr. said Cole Palen showed up at the Bergdoll farm with a 1950s automobile pulling a U-Haul trailer in 1963 and was greeted by Pancoast’s father, Seth Pancoast, Sr., a former chauffeur for the Bergdolls. They entered the Bergdoll barn and saw the renowned 1909 Bergdoll Bleriot in the rafters, covered with pigeon poop. Finding the barn abandoned and unattended, Seth Pancoast, Sr., drove with Palen to find Erwin Bergdoll at his farmhouse in Honey Brook, Pennsylvania, about 40 miles west of Broomall. Met at the door by Bergdoll with a shotgun (Erwin’s estranged and difficult son, Erwin Bergdoll, Jr. was along with them), Pancoast, Sr., and Palen apparently were able to calm Erwin Bergdoll, Sr. enough to lower the shotgun and strike a deal for the purchase of the Bergdoll Bleriot and vintage automobiles that were also rotting away in the Bergdoll’s Broomall barn. Pancoast, Jr. claimed the cars were Hudsons belonging to Emma Bergdoll and Grover Bergdoll. The Bleriot airplane belonged to Louis Bergdoll. Pancoast, Jr. said his father “got all the signed documents,” and coordinated the transaction.
Seth Pancoast, Jr. said he (as a much younger man) climbed into the pigeon-poop rafters and helped lower the Bleriot to the floor of the barn. Palen packed the airplane into the trailer and took it home to the Hudson Valley. A photograph from that day shows the wings folded into the trailer and the tail of the plane extending forward, over the top of the car.
There was no mention of Erwin’s 1908 Fairmount Park Motor Race championship 150 HP Benz that had been stored in Erwin’s machine shop. Its disposition, when and to whom, is unknown.
Palen ended up with the Bleriot (minus the stolen engine) which he later sold for display at the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Garden City, Long Island, New York where it remains today. It’s unclear who got the vintage Hudsons, described as a limousine and a touring car, but Pancoast may have gotten one while Palen got the other. Neither vehicle is accounted for today. These Hudsons could have been Grover Bergdoll’s 1917 Hudson escape car and Grover’s and Emma’s Hudson limousines, but the precise models are unknown. They’re pictured in the book, The Bergdoll Boys.
Interestingly, years later the Bergdoll Bleriot’s stolen engine ended up being displayed on loan from a Pennsylvania family at the Franklin Institute for decades, returned, and later sold to another Pennsylvania family which donated it to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington where it reportedly remains in storage today.
Questions? Based on these circumstances wouldn’t the Bleriot engine still legally belong to the Bergdolls? Louis was alive when the engine was stolen in the 1930s but he had long been dead when his Bleriot was sold to Cole Palen in 1963, and his estate was managed by his sons, Louis and Wilbur. Emma had long been dead too and her estate was managed by a family trust for which Erwin did not have a role. Grover was mentally incapacitated in the early 1960s and his assets were under court supervision by an appointed attorney and his son, Alfred.
More questions. In 1963, could Erwin Bergdoll legally sell or bequeath his brother’s airplane and the Hudson automobiles that belonged to his brother and his mother to collectors, one which later sold the airplane to a museum? Were the ownership transfers made with written documents as Seth Pancoast, Jr. declared? If not, were the transfers legal? Do owners of the vintage airplane, and automobiles have a clear title to the artifacts today?
Of course, all of this happened many years ago when simple transfers of artifacts were made with handshake and verbal agreements, or when unattended important artifacts were taken by good samaritons to rescue and save them from ruination. However, do the long-ago transactions hold up to today’s new ethical standards for prestigious museums that now possess vintage (and valuable) artifacts obtained under questionable circumstances?
It’s a quandary the museums, and others who possess Bergdoll relics should explore and address.