(continued from part 1)

From the evidence in today’s digital newspaper databases, an historian can easily recognize that Schade was a difficult character who brought trouble everywhere he went. But to each new place he arrived, in his time, he cut the image of a respectable, albeit odd, German minister.

While stories of Schade’s troubles in Baltimore followed him to Seattle, eventually, stories of his troubles in Seattle apparently did not follow him back East. He was able to shrug off controversy and failure and start over again. It was common for ministers to move frequently between churches and to accept calls to serve in other states. And besides, squabbles between churches and their ministers were nothing new, nor anything out of the ordinary, so from a distance, it was hard to know who was at fault. But a pattern of reported misbehavior suggests that much of the blame was Schade’s.

Back in Ohio, Schade acquired a position as a professor at Ursinus College in 1892-1893.[1] He sometimes claimed to have a Doctor of Divinity degree (D.D.) or a Ph.D, but when or where he could have received these degrees is not clear. 

Then, in 1894, Schade become the minister of Immanuel Reformed Church in Williamsport, PA. But he did not last long in this position either. The congregation called him “a liar and fraud” and dismissed him for “conduct unbecoming a minister and a gentleman.”[2] Schade refused to leave. One Sunday, intending to preach a sermon, he found that his key would no longer unlock the church doors.[3]

 Schade’s trouble in Williamsport did not end there. He ordered the arrest of a man who had not paid him the fee for a burial service of a deceased child. The case was decided against Schade, as were seven cases of unpaid labor claims made against him by members of the church. Schade won a suit against the Trustees of the German Reformed Church, however, and he was paid $107.97 of salary owed to him. But over the next two years, Schade had initiated so many other lawsuits in the area that he was indicted for “barratry, or vexatious, habitual and unwarranted litigation.”[4]

In 1897, the Pittsburgh Press printed a notice that “Rev. Herbert E. Schade” (obviously the incorrect first name) had been appointed to teach German at Mt. Union College in Alliance, Ohio. “Rev. Schade is a thorough scholar of high ability and attainments and in every way well equipped for the position,” the notice read. If the name had not been incorrect, one would suspect that Schade had written the notice himself.[5] In typical fashion Schade resigned from his position at Mt. Union College after two years.[6]

If Schade had a hometown in his adult life, it was Cleveland, a place that he seemed to always return to after his failed adventures elsewhere. From at least 1900 to 1904 he was living there, working as an editor for the Central Publishing House (formerly German Reformed Publishing House).

Again and again, Schade was able to make strong first impressions and tell convincing stories. He used this skill to further his schemes.

In 1901, when President William McKinley visited his hometown Canton, Ohio, the Indianapolis Journal reported that a Rev. A.E. Schade of Cleveland, formerly of Alliance, Ohio, visited Canton to see the President and discuss “securing some government assistance” for a plan of colonization in Cuba.[7] In 1906, Schade visited Edmonton, Canada, supposedly serving as superintendent of the mission board of the German Reformed Church. He told his hosts that he sought to establish a church and college in Edmonton.[8] 

In these years, the pace of Schade movements accelerated and the scope of his troubles grew. Schade took a position at a church in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he lived from 1907 to 1909. Again, this ended in a dispute. Schade accused the officers of his church of being “deficient in Christian insight,” and he convinced the city prosecutor to arrest the church officers and charge them with “conspiracy in an attempt to oust him from the pastorship.” Again, he refused to resign from his position, despite letters from church members asking him to do so.[9] The 1909 City Directory for St. Paul, Minnesota noted that he had “moved to Brooklyn, N.Y.”

In the next few years, when Schade was not in the Caribbean, he was traveling around the United States, trying to find investors for a scheme to create a German colony in Panama. Shipping manifests confirm that Schade visited Cuba from New York in 1909 and in 1910 and that he went to Panama in 1911 and again in 1912. He tended to live in and travel to places with a German American population.

The 1910 census recorded a 64-year-old Schade boarding in Cleveland with a 47-year-old woman, Rachael Roscoe. He gave his occupation as bookkeeper at a wholesale house, and he was described as the uncle of Ms. Roscoe, likely a convenient ruse so that no one would suspect any inappropriate relations between him, the boarder, and his female host. After his death, it was discovered that Schade had recently been boarding at a home of a Mrs. S. Rebholz, and that he still owed her money for lodging.

When Cuba was the proposed location of his “Era Nueva Mission and Industrial School Syndicate” Schade claimed to have “secured” 150,000 acres in the Cuban mountains and announced that a university was to be built at the colony. [10] The number of acres he owned, or as he liked to say “secured,” as it was more ambiguous, often changed as he told the story.

In 1911, Schade claimed just 100 acres in Panama.[11]  By 1913, it was 30,000 and then 50,000 in the “Bocas del Torro.” Some of this land he claimed to have purchased, while other parcels he said were granted to his “Laymen Mission Society” by the Panamanian government. Plans for the colony included hundreds of fertile farms and a trolley line connecting to Panama City. Schade spoke of harvesting mahogany, raising alligators to sell their hides, and even domesticating manatees.[12]

In 1910, Schade attempted, through an assemblyman in Brooklyn, to get the state of New York to incorporate his “Era Nueva Mission and School Syndicate.” A state senator rejected the bill because “it contained very broad provisions, which would permit the syndicate to do almost anything.”[13] Schade continued to raise money, nevertheless. In August, 1912, he advertised in the St. Louis German-language Westliche Post for interested parties to pay $300 to his mission and receive 30 acres of land and a building lot, with a contract of five years. The payment could be made to general delivery at Era Nueva Mission in Panama.[14]

No one discovered that the scheme was fraudulent until Schade was found dead at Cincinnati’s Rand Hotel on January 6, 1913. Although cyanide was found in the room, local authorities initially declared his death “mysterious” and began an inquiry into it.  

Continued in part 3.

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[1] Ursinus College Bulletin, 10:2 (November 1893). Digital Commons at Ursinus College.

[2] Harrisburg Daily Independent, 20 December 1894; Altoona Tribune, 20 December 1894; The Scranton Tribune, 21 December 1894, adds that he was called a “fraud, a nuisance, and a liar.”

[3] St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 25 December 1894.

[4] The Morning Call, 7 February 1895; The Evening Democrat, 20 May 1895; Williamsport Sun-Gazette, 11 December 1895; The Semi-Weekly Messenger, 9 April 1897.

[5] The Pittsburgh Press, 1 August 1897.

[6] Freie Presse Fur Texas, 3 August 1899; Der Deutsche Correspondent, 3 August 1899.

[7] The Indianapolis Journal, 14 July 1901.

[8] The Edmonton Bulletin, 9 January 1906.

[9] Star Tribune, 28 May 1908.

[10] The Cuba Review (December 1908), 26.

[11] The Lima Morning Star and Republican Gazette, 21 September 1911.

[12] Pomona Morning Times, 23 October 1912.

[13] The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 5 May 1910.

[14] Westliche Post, 9 August 1912.