Frank Rhoner

At its postseason meeting of October 1883, the leadership of the fledgling American Association confronted an organizational problem: the ownership of its New York Metropolitans franchise by the Metropolitan Exhibition Company, the same entity that operated the New York Giants of the rival National League.1 The remedy adopted by circuit brass was drastic. AA Secretary Jimmy Williams notified the Mets representatives at the meeting that “they must cut loose from their National League connection or forfeit membership in the American Association.”2 Shortly before the following season commenced, the MEC “announced the disposal of all their right, title and interest in the Metropolitan Base Ball Club.”3 The franchise would now be guided – at least on paper – by a newcomer to the professional baseball scene: Manhattan furniture manufacturer Frank Rhoner.

The 13 months that Rhoner spent as club president were eventful, highlighted by the Mets’ capture of the 1884 American Association pennant. The following May, he abruptly severed his connection to the franchise, blindsided by personnel moves stealthily orchestrated by MEC overlord John B. Day that fortified the NL New York club at Mets expense. Rhoner’s other claim upon posterity is a morbid one. Despondent over late life business reversals, he fatally shot his third wife and then turned the gun on himself. The ensuing press coverage of this 1898 murder-suicide was extensive and has recently been cited by academics as an early example of forensic journalism.4 To the extent that fragmentary evidence permits, the paragraphs below recount the story of this briefly tenured and ill-fated baseball executive.

Next to nothing is known of our subject’s early years. But census and other government records indicate that Francis Rhoner was born about 1830 in Switzerland and emigrated to this country in 1845.5 His whereabouts and activities over the next decade are unknown. In September 1860, however, a baseball game between the Excelsior clubs of Brooklyn and Baltimore was umpired by “Frank Rhoner of the Boston Bowdoin Club.”6

In late April 1862, Rhoner married 24-year-old Cassandania Bailey in Boston.7 The couple’s seven-year union appears to have been childless and ended with the death of the first Mrs. Rhoner in October 1869.8 By that time, Rhoner had established himself in business in Manhattan, with Frank Rhoner & Company having become a thriving manufacturer and wholesale distributor of fine furniture, specializing in high-end pieces for residential parlors, hallways, and libraries.9

In March 1871, fire destroyed the six-story Canal Street building which housed the Rhoner manufacturing plant, with the company sustaining a $60,000 loss that was only partially insured.10 Undaunted, Rhoner persevered, relocating his furniture-making operation to the Bowery. Two years later he was elected vice-president of the Furniture Board of Trade, a newly created organization designed to deal with unionization efforts, strike threats, and other menaces to furniture makers’ interests.11 In 1874, Rhoner expanded his business, soliciting retail customers to the company’s new furniture showroom.12

Fire struck again in February 1876, destroying the Bowery premises and inflicting a substantial loss upon Frank Rhoner & Company.13 The business’s namesake thereupon demonstrated his resiliency by publishing a newspaper testimonial on behalf of the Marvin Safe and Scale Company, manufacturer of the safe which spared the company books from destruction and placing an order for a new one.14 The following year, Rhoner and business associate Siegfried Willershausen applied for a patent on the deluxe rocking chair that the pair had created.15

By the time that the 1880 US Census was taken, Frank Rhoner had entered his prime. He had remarried, taking Katherine (surname unknown) as his second wife early the previous decade; fathered five children – Ida, Frank, Jr., Carrie Amelia, Gertrude, and Herbert – with a sixth (Irene) on the way; lodged his growing family in posh residential quarters on prestigious Lexington Avenue in Manhattan; relocated the company manufacturing plant and showroom to the city’s eastside; and been appointed to the executive committee of the Furniture Board of Trade.16 Conspicuous by its absence from this resume was any connection of Rhoner to professional baseball in New York, then in the early stages of revival under the auspices of Manhattan tobacco magnate and weekend amateur club pitcher John B. Day.17

Detailed accountings of the pro game’s early days in greater Gotham, the formation of the New York Metropolitans, and the incorporation of the Metropolitan Exhibition Company are beyond the scope of this profile.18 Suffice it to say that American Association club owners were uneasy with the Metropolitans being subject to the dictates of the same John B. Day who also owned (and was club president of) the New York franchise in the rival National League, and that they feared – rightly – that Day would prefer the interests of the NL Giants over those of the AA Mets. Hence, the divestiture edict handed Mets representatives at the American Association meeting of October 1883.

Perhaps unexpectedly, the MEC, Day’s corporate alter ego,19 bowed to the AA ultimatum – at least on the surface. In April 1884, it was announced that the MEC had relinquished the entirety of its interest in the New York Mets.20 Ownership of the club was now vested in the Metropolitan Base Ball Company, an entity recently incorporated by furniture maker Frank Rhoner, Mets field leader Jim Mutrie, and one W.H. Kipp. The organization was capitalized at $25,000,21 with 175 of the 250 shares issued by the new company held by Rhoner. Mutrie and Kipp divided the remainder. Rhoner also assumed the Mets club presidency.22 It was further announced that “the Metropolitan Exhibition Company has no further connection with the Metropolitan Base Ball Club and will push the interests of the [NL] New York Club” instead.23

The above pronouncements were greeted with skepticism. Few in the baseball world had ever heard of the new Mets club president, and fewer still accepted the claim that the Metropolitans franchise was now being independently operated. Rather, the ownership transfer was dismissed as a sham designed only to pay lip service to the complaints of other American Association club owners about the influence of Giants club boss Day over Mets’ administration. Incoming New York Mets club president Rhoner was viewed as merely a Day factotum.24

There is no evidence that Rhoner played an active part in club affairs during the 1884 season. Astutely guided by manager Mutrie, the Mets rode the exceptional pitching of future Hall of Famer Tim Keefe (37-17) and Jack Lynch (37-15), the batting of burly young first baseman Dave Orr (a league-leading .354 BA with 112 RBIs), and the sterling all-around play of third baseman Dude Esterbrook (.314) to cruise to an unexpected American Association pennant. The Metropolitans’ bubble was burst, however, when matched against the National League champion Providence Grays in a three-game precursor to the modern World Series. Behind the work of 60-game winner Hoss Radbourn, Providence swept the series via lopsided, poorly-attended victories, all recorded at the original Polo Grounds in North Manhattan.25

Notwithstanding the postseason disappointment, the Mets enjoyed the torchlit parade along lower Manhattan streets conducted in club honor in late October. Among the dignitaries riding in the same coach-in-four as manager Mutrie was Mets club president Frank Rhoner.26 Meanwhile, back at MEC headquarters, things were not as cheery. Even with a pennant-winner, the Mets had drawn only 68,000 home fans and posted a $15,000 loss for the season.27 The MEC’s other ball club presented the reverse situation. Despite having four Cooperstown-bound players on the roster,28 the New York Giants had done no better than tied for fourth in the National League’s final standings. But the club had attracted 105,000 paid home admissions and returned a handsome $35,000 profit for the company.29 Day and his cohorts therefore decided to bolster the Giants’ fortunes for the oncoming season – at the Metropolitans’ expense.

Uninformed and oblivious to the intentions of the MEC brain trust, club president Rhoner (along with manager Mutrie) represented the Mets’ interests at the winter meeting of the American Association, held at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in Manhattan.30 Several months thereafter, the MEC struck, directing the transfer of manager Mutrie from the Mets to the company’s National League club for the 1885 season. Even more unsettling were preseason insinuations that Mets stars Keefe and Esterbrook – then vacationing incommunicado in parts unknown31 – were also headed for the Giants. Rhoner pooh-poohed such reports, stating that “he knows of no facts of a deal between the New Yorks and the Metropolitans for the transfer of Keefe and Esterbrook.”32 The Mets club president was therefore stunned by the announcement that via some rule-bending chicanery implemented by the MEC while Keefe and Esterbrook were away, the two Mets mainstays had become free agents and then signed to contracts with the New York Giants.33

Following revelation of the event, Rhoner put on a brave face, vigorously denying reports that the player moves foreshadowed the imminent dissolution of the Mets. “We are not going to disband, and all rumors to the contrary are groundless,” he informed the press. “The Mets will play through the season, and mark my word, they will make a strong fight to win first honors again.”34 But when Mutrie publicly admitted that the Mets club president “never knew or heard of” the Keefe-Esterbrook transfers beforehand,35 the embarrassment proved too much. Rhoner promptly resigned the club presidency, selling his Mets stock to Joseph Gordon, a well-to-do Manhattan coal dealer and Tammany Hall confederate of John B. Day.36 Frank Rhoner’s 13-month association with major league baseball had come to an end.37

Rhoner’s resignation drew a mean-spirited farewell from an unidentified Sporting Life correspondent who remarked, “Did anyone ever charge or suppose for a moment that Rhoner ever knew anything of these matters [i.e., the Keefe and Esterbrook transfers]? How quickly, though, … he washed his hands of the whole thing when he found out what little account he was.”38 But Rhoner soon had far graver matters to address than the putdowns of an anonymous sportswriter. Only weeks after severing the affiliation with the New York Metropolitans, his wife Katie died,39 leaving Frank five young children at home to manage.40 Less than 18 months later, he married again, taking fortyish upholsterer Frieda Muller Glass as his third bride.41 For the remainder of her life, Frieda served as stepmother to the Rhoner offspring.

Agreeably for Rhoner, his furniture business was financially stable, with the manufacturing plant and nearby showroom humming at their lower eastside Manhattan locations. In June 1892, he was reelected first vice-president of the Furniture Trade Board,42 but soon thereafter Frank Rhoner & Company, like other American manufacturing concerns, began to suffer the consequences of the deep business recession of 1893. In May 1894, the company failed, obliged to assign assets to creditors.43 The news was received with regret in the industry, with a prominent trade journal observing, “Mr. Rhoner has been in business for 35 years and has borne an unblemished reputation. All who know him and his partner Edward W. Schutte will wish them safe delivery from their troubles.”44 But the business did not recover, and by March 1895 the company’s furniture stock and buildings had been sold by the sheriff to satisfy Rhoner creditors.45

Although obliged to relocate his home to a rental property in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, Rhoner endeavored to maintain appearances, even engaging domestic help. But the meager $15/week salary that he reportedly earned as a machinist was unequal to the task.46 The Rhoners then began taking in lodgers and pawning Frieda’s jewelry to keep going. Nevertheless, they remained in arrears on their rent and seriously in debt.

Frank and Frieda spent the evening of Saturday, November 26, 1898, at home, socializing with the two Rhoner sons, by then young adults, and playing pinochle. Shortly after midnight, the couple retired to their bedroom. Outside, an early winter blizzard howled, muffling sounds inside the residence. When the maid entered the bedroom late the following morning, a horrifying sight awaited her. Frieda lay on the bed, her nightgown covered in blood. Frank, too, was blood-spattered, seated in a chair with a handgun in his right hand.47 Although unconscious, both Rhoners were still alive and promptly transported to Brooklyn Eastern District Hospital. There, it was determined that each had sustained a gunshot wound to the top of the head.

Frank died without ever regaining consciousness, but Frieda became lucid long enough to answer questions for a brief period. After first attributing her injury to an intruder, Frieda revealed that she and Frank had quarreled inside the bedroom and that she had been shot by her husband. Slim chance brain surgery failed, and Frieda expired later that day. Meanwhile, a letter penned by Frank the evening of the incident was reluctantly surrendered to the police by Frank, Jr. Addressed to eldest daughter Ida Rhoner Stiegler, the missive related the extent of Rhoner’s financial distress. It also left directions for the disbursement of family keepsakes and the care of handicapped son Herbert.

At the obligatory inquest, a coroner’s jury was unimpressed by a medical expert who opined that the wound to the top of Frank Rhoner’s head had not been self-administered. Confounding any third-party shooter hypothesis was the fact there was no evidence that anyone other than Frank and Frieda had entered the bedroom on the evening of their deaths. And the letter that Frank left behind afforded little doubt that he had killed his wife, intended to take his own life, and that his conduct had been premeditated. The jury therefore returned a verdict of murder-suicide.48

While the panel was deliberating its judgment, the deceased were quietly laid to rest in adjoining graves at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. After a brief spasm of newspaper attention, the media moved on and the Rhoner murder-suicide was soon forgotten by the public. And the matter remained forgotten for more than a century. But in a recently published academic work about today’s blurred lines between news and entertainment, coauthors Venessa Garcia and Samantha G. Arkerson retrieved the New York Journal account of the long-ago Rhoner murder-suicide49 and cited its explicit detail and crime scene graphics as an early example of forensic or investigative journalism.50 Whatever the text’s pedagogical merit, its resurrection of his regrettable final hours did little service to the memory of Frank Rhoner.

Acknowledgments

This story was reviewed by Rory Costello and Kim Juhase and fact-checked by Terry Bohn.

Photo credit: New York Sun, November 28, 1898.

Sources

The sources for the information imparted above are contained in the endnotes.

Notes

1 Although the club nickname Giants was not coined until 1885, for purposes of clarity it will be used herein to identify the MEC’s National League club.

2 Preston D. Orem, Baseball from the Newspaper Accounts, 1882-1891 (Altadena, California: Self-published, 1966-1967), 75.

3 Orem, 104. See also, “Diamond Dust,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, April 20, 1884: 11; “Gotham Gleanings,” Chicago Tribune, April 17, 1884: 3.

4 See Venessa Garcia and Samantha G. Arkerson, Crime, Media and Reality: Examining Mixed Messages about Crime and Justice in Popular Media (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018), 23-25.

5 See e.g., the November 1898 State of New York death record for Frank Rhoner, accessible online.

6 “The Base-Ball Match,” (Baltimore) Daily Exchange, September 24, 1860: 1.

7 State of Massachusetts marriage records, accessible online. See also, “Married,” Boston Daily Advertiser, May 3, 1862: 1.

8 As reported in “Marriages and Deaths: Died,” New York Tribune, October 12, 1869: 5; “Died,” New York Herald, October 12, 1869: 5. No cause of death was discovered for Cassie Rhoner.

9 As reflected in advertisements placed in the New York Herald, Tribune, Sun, Dispatch, Evening Post, and elsewhere throughout 1869.

10 As reported in “Fires,” Albany Argus, March 28, 1871: 1; “Miscellaneous Items,” Troy Daily Times, March 27, 1871: 2; and elsewhere.

11 See “The Impending Crisis,” Cincinnati Daily Gazette, March 17, 1873: 5.

12 As exemplified by “Furniture!” (New York) Jewish Messinger, April 1, 1874: 8, which informed “all those contemplating the refurnishing of their houses … to call upon us before purchasing elsewhere.”

13 See “New York: Destruction by Fire of Houses and Stocks,” Charlotte Observer, February 8, 1876: 4; “Fire in New York,” (Lancaster, Pennsylvania) Daily Evening Express, February 7, 1876: 3, both of which reported company losses at $45,000, but insured for $33,000.

14 See “Large Fire in the Bowery,” (New York) Daily Graphic, February 12, 1876: 8.

15 As recorded in Specifications of Patents (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1878), 63.

16 “Furniture Board of Trade,” New York Herald, January 13, 1880: 9.

17 Among other places, details are provided in the BioProject profile of Day and the SABR Team Ownership History of the New York Metropolitans, 1883-1887, both accessible visa the SABR website.

18 The New York City area had been without a major league team since the Brooklyn-based Hartford Dark Blues left the National League at the close of the 1877 season. The year before, the New York (Brooklyn) Mutuals had been expelled by the NL.

19 After the success of the Mets inaugural season in 1880, Day formed the Metropolitan Exhibition Company to oversee club fortunes. Day himself was the MEC’s principal shareholder with Manhattan booksellers and baseball enthusiasts Walter Appleton and Charles T. Dillingham admitted as junior associates. During the winter of 1882-1883, the MEC accepted an invitation to have the Mets join the American Association. Appleton was designated New York Metropolitans club president. Shortly thereafter, the MEC entered an entirely different ball club (soon known as the New York Giants) in the National League, with Day appointing himself club president.

20 As reported in “Diamond Dust” and “Gotham Gleanings,” above. See also, “The National Game,” New York Sun, April 17, 1884: 3.

21 As subsequently related in “The Base Ball Muddle,” Sporting Life, December 16, 1885: 4.

22 “The Metropolitans Under New Management,” Philadelphia Times, April 17, 1884: 3; “The National Game,” above.

23 Orem, 104.

24 See again, “The Base Ball Muddle,” above.

25 Per the SABR Team Ownership History of the New York Metropolitans, above. Providence outscored the Mets by an aggregate run count of 21 to 3, including a 12-2 match closer viewed by only 300 Polo Grounds spectators.

26 As noted in “‘Mets’ Triumph,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 28, 1884: 8.

27 Orem, 125, The loss included the one-time cost of construction and maintenance of Metropolitan Park, the detested Harlem River ballpark abandoned in mid-June in favor of return of Mets home games to the Polo Grounds.

28 The 1884 New York Giants roster featured catcher Buck Ewing, first baseman Roger Connor, infielder-outfielder John Montgomery Ward, and pitcher Mickey Welch, all of whom now have plaques in the Hall of Fame.

29 Orem, 138. The Giants’ bottom line also benefited from a 50 cents general admission ticket charge, double the 25 cents needed to see a Mets game.

30 As reported in “The Annual Meeting,” New York Clipper, December 20, 1884: 634. See also, the 1885 Reach Official American Association Base Ball Guide, 73 (which misspells our subject’s surname as Rhouer).

31 It was believed that Keefe and Esterbrook, along with Jim Mutrie, were visiting John B. Day’s onion farm in Bermuda. See “Base-Ball,” Chicago Tribune, April 13, 1885: 5; “Baseball,” New York Herald, April 13, 1885: 6. Or were sunning themselves on a beach in Cuba. “Diamond Dust,” Kansas City Journal, April 6, 1885: 2; “Base Ball Notes,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 5, 1885: 6.

32 “Still Rampant,” Sporting Life, May 20, 1885: 6.

33 As reported in “Sporting Record,” St. Paul Daily Globe, April 20, 1885: 1; “The Baseball Outlook,” New York Herald, April 19, 1885: 10; and elsewhere.

34 “Baseball,” Washington (DC) Critic, May 11, 1885: 1, citing the Baltimore American.

35 Per “Harlem Echoes,” Sporting Life, May 27, 1885: 6.

36 As reported in “Notes,” Chicago Tribune, May 12, 1885: 2. See also, New York Times, May 12, 1885: 3.

37 Later that year, however, Rhoner supplied an affidavit about the Mets’ yearly expenses to Erastus Wiman when the Staten Island transit and amusement tycoon took the American Association to court over its attempt to preclude his entry into club ownership ranks. See “Sporting Affairs,” Worcester Evening Gazette, December 21, 1885: 8.

38 See again, “Harlem Echoes,” above.

39 The death of Katie Rhoner was reported in “Died,” New York Herald, June 2, 1885: 8. Apart from being identified as the wife of Frank Rhoner of Lexington Avenue, Manhattan, no other info about the deceased was provided.

40 Sady, Carrie Amelia, “daughter of Frank and Katie Rhoner,” had passed away at age three in March 1879. See “Died,” New York Herald, March 16, 1879: 13.

41 State of New York marriage records posit the Rhoner-Glass nuptials at the Madison Street German Presbyterian Church in Manhattan on November 9, 1886.

42 “National Furniture Convention for St. Louis in 1893,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, June 12, 1892: 21.

43 As reported in “Furniture Manufacturer Assigns,” New York Herald, May 2, 1894: 10; “Frank Rhoner & Co. Fail,” New York Evening World, May 1, 1894: 2; and elsewhere.

44 The Furniture Trade Review and Interior Decorator, Vol. 15, June 1894, 53.

45 See “Business Troubles,” New York Times, March 9, 1895: 9.

46 The occupation listed on the Frank Rhoner death record. Otherwise, see “Murder and Suicide Caused by Poverty,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 28, 1898: 16. This and other news accounts of the fatalities that identified Rhoner as a longtime lumber salesman were mistaken.

47 The narrative above has been stitched together from the reportage of the Brooklyn Citizen, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, (Brooklyn) Standard Union, Brooklyn Times, New York Herald, New York Journal, New York Sun, and New York Times, November 28-December 2, 1898.

48 As memorialized in “Verdict in the Rhoner Case,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, December 2, 1898: 11; “Murder and Suicide,” Brooklyn Times, December 2, 1898: 3. See also, “The Rhoner Inquest,” Standard Union, December 2, 1898: 8: “The following verdict was rendered: That Frank Rhoner came to his death … by shock attending a pistol shot in the head; said wound being inflicted with suicidal intent; and that Frieda Rhoner came to her death from shock attending a pistol shot wound inflicted by Frank Rhoner, Sr.”

49 See “Husband and Wife Shot Dead in Their Bedroom,” New York Journal, November 28, 1898: 3.

50 See again, Crime, Media and Reality, above at 23-25. The improbable conclusion drawn by the authors from the Journal reportage is that Frank and Frieda Rhoner were likely murdered by Frank, Jr.