Evelyn Brodstone: From Nebraska to Nobility

The “rags to riches” story of Evelene Brodstone, a Norwegian farmer’s daughter from Nebraska USA who became one of the richest and most successful business women in the world, is certainly worthy of inclusion in this blog. 

Evelene Brodstone, later known as Lady Evelyn Vestey was one of the highest paid female executives of the 1920s. Beginning as a stenographer for the Vestey Cold Storage Company in Chicago, Illinois, she rose through the ranks to become chief auditor and trouble-shooter for the Vestey Brothers. In 1924, she married the boss, William Vestey, 1st Baron Vestey and took her place among the ranks of the English nobility but she never forgot her humble Nebraskan roots and remained a philanthropist benefactor to her hometown for many years.  

Evelene Brodstone was born on August 1, 1875 in Monroe, Wisconsin, to Norwegian immigrant parents Hans and Mathilde Emelie Brodstone. She had one older sibling, a brother called Lewis, who had been born in 1871. 

The family moved to Superior, Nebraska when Evelene was three years old. Her father operated a general store until he died three years later, leaving Mathilde Brodstone to raise two small children alone. The family lived on a farm, and Brodstone's early and high school education was conducted in a simple one-room log cabin where students would often attend barefoot.

Brodstone was a superb student, excelling at mathematics and working hard throughout the summer months on her schooling. Her childhood was filled with square dancing, swimming and fishing at a local millrace. She was also an avid cyclist, having won her first bicycle as a prize from the Western Pearl Baking Powder Company of Chicago. 

After graduating from the Superior High School at the age of 14, she was employed briefly at a local milling company. After taking a business course in stenography and accounting, at Elliott's Business College in Burlington, Iowa, she returned to Superior and worked for the Guthrie Brothers and at Henningsen Produce Company. She later returned to Elliot's Business College to take more courses. 

Brothers William and Edmund Vestey

Whilst visiting friends in Chicago she answered a "stenographer wanted" advertisement placed in a Chicago paper by Vestey Brothers, a British-based international meat-packing firm. She got the job and left Superior in 1895. 

As a stenographer with the Vestey Cold Storage Company, she was earning $12 a week and sent half of her income home to her mother. The company  had been founded at his father's behest by William Vestey in Liverpool, 1876, and had been run by his brother Edmund since 1882. William Vestey's regular stenographer was out to lunch and he needed someone to urgently take dictation and type a letter, so Evelene volunteered her services. Vestey was so impressed with her that he eventually made her his personal stenographer and raised her pay to $20 a week.

Lady Evelyn Vestey

 Evelene would often think of innovative ways to improve the company and these suggestions were often acted upon by management and proved effective. Thereafter, Brodstone rose rapidly through the ranks of the growing company, becoming auditor, then manager of Vestey Brothers' American branch, and finally being promoted to travelling auditor for the entire Vestey firm, at an annual salary of $250,000. She also took an active part in expanding the business and in developing their new meat packing houses.

Lady Vestey in her Coronation Robes

Her work took her to the interior of China; to the upper Orinoco River in Venezuela; and to Russia, where her hotel was dynamited, killing all within, while she was visiting the Vestey plant. During World War I she was in charge of the Vestey interests in South America and Australia, and on one occasion she visited the uncharted interior of Australia with only a native guide, becoming   one of the first white woman to ever enter the area. She purchased 6,000,000 acres (2,400,000 ha) of land for the company in Australia. 

When the manager of a Vestey plant in South Africa absconded with the company's funds, Brodstone followed him halfway around the world in order to catch him. 

Evelene tried several times to retire and wanted to return to a quieter life back in Superior, but William Vestey kept telling her that she was badly needed and as a direct consequence, she kept returning to work.

The Blue Star Shipping Line was founded by the Vestey family; at the time of World War I, its twelve vessels all had names starting with "Brod-" after Brodstone, e.g. Brodholme, Brodland, Brodlea. 

Under the leadership of William, the Vestey Company pioneered in cold storage of food. As a result, he was able to provide much needed food for the allied forces in World War I and was rewarded for his effort with a seat in the House of Lords.

In 1922, William Vestey was elevated to the peerage as the first Baron Vestey. In 1923, his first wife died and just a year later, Lord Vestey married Evelene Brodstone who was now forty-nine, and who at his behest changed the spelling of her given name to "Evelyn" in order to become more anglicized. As a wealthy and powerful woman herself, Evelene married William simply because she loved him, not because he was rich or because he was her boss.

Brodstone Memorial Hospital

 Despite being a member of English Aristocracy, Lady Vestey always retained her close connection to Superior, Nebraska and visited her mother and brother frequently, until their deaths in 1924 and 1936 respectively. 

Along with her brother Lewis Brodstone, and her husband William Vestey, she gave the city land and funds to build The Brodstone Memorial Hospital in memory of their mother. The hospital is still in use today, although it has been greatly enlarged and was later renamed the Nuckolls County Hospital. Every year the hospital still receives $50,000 from the Vesteys' endowment. The text of the dedicatory plaque on The Brodstone memorial Hospital was written by writer Willa Cather, who had known the Brodstones during her youth in Red Cloud, Nebraska. After her brother Lewis's death, Evelyn gave Superior two blocks of land that were created into a bird sanctuary and children's park in his memory. She sent Christmas gifts to the school children of the city , and contributed a large collection of  her personal artifacts to the Superior museum in Nuckolls County. She also established a scholarship fund for local students, and purchased land for a home for the elderly.

Before the advent of World War Two, the Vestey’s lived a happy and luxurious life, with a home on the Riviera, an estate in London, and their own 250-passenger cruise ship. Evelyn continued to reside with her husband in London in the 1930’s, and the beginning years of the Second World War caused her much grief. A number of passenger ships of the Vestey Blue Star Line, of which she was an executive officer, were torpedoed and sunk, and many of her close friends, fellow employees and work colleagues were lost.

Before Lord Vestey died in 1940 he had conservatively valued the Vestey Brothers company as worth over £90 million. The family were one of the richest in Britain, after the Royals. 

A year later on May 23, 1941, Lady Vestey was killed during a Nazi bombing raid on London during the Blitz. Her ashes were sent to Superior for interment, making her the only member of the British nobility who is buried in Nebraska.

In honor of Lady Vestey, Superior holds an annual Victorian Festival every Memorial Day weekend and the city bills itself as the "Victorian Capital of Nebraska".