There’s a good chance that neither Thomas Lovewell nor any other citizen of the village of Lovewell recovered any portion of the deposits swallowed up by the Courtland Bank failure of 1893, though it wasn’t for lack of trying. After the death of the bank’s owner, Aaron S. Everest, in 1894, Thomas Lovewell spearheaded a concerted effort to wring some money out of the Everest Estate.
A list of local depositors and the amount owed to each one was prepared by S. C. Crummer, a banker from the county seat of Belleville who had been appointed as receiver for the failed bank. The list was delivered to Thomas Lovewell who would file a claim against the estate of Aaron S. Everest to recover the $7,202.36 which had vanished, plus $1,296.42 interest.
The suit also contained Crummer’s damning narrative of what had transpired at the Exchange Bank of Courtland one week before operations were suspended:
… on or about the 3rd day of August 1893, the said A. S. Everest since deceased, took and carried away, all the moneys, promisary Notes, securities and all other evidence of indebtedness of said Bank, and converted the same to his own use and benefit, and that said moneys, promisary notes, securities and other evidences of indebtedness (was) of the amount and value of $30,000 …
That the assets of said Bank so converted as aforesaid, went to swell the assets of said estate.
It was not the first time that the late Aaron S. Everest had been accused of fiscal malfeasance. The first known instance was when the attorney was still in his twenties, after serving a fledgling term as County Treasurer for Mower County, Minnesota. In February of 1860 the St. Charles City Republican Intelligencer published a taunting broadside about shenanigans in the courthouse of their neighboring county.
We learn that Aaron S. Everest, late Treasurer of Mower Co., Minn., is charged with being a defaulter. The evening after the defalcation was discovered by the County Board, the records of the office were destroyed, and some of the remains were found in a stove at Everest’s house. He was arrested and committed to prison.
It was the sort jocular gloating typical of a partisan newspaper after a regime change. There may have been irregularities in the treasurer’s office, but there were surely no breadcrumbs leading back to the previous treasurer’s fireplace, nor any prison cell in his future. Everest had indeed served a two-year term as Mower County Treasurer of late, and had even made a play to become Minnesota State Treasurer, a process which involved a series of voice votes by a board of electors. After his support dwindled in the early innings Everest gracefully withdrew from the contest to avoid further embarrassment.
The attorney would find himself the victim of thievery in 1868, when the Mower County Transcript mentioned the “robbery of Col. Everest’s house a short time ago,” in the paper’s diatribe against rampant lawlessness in Austin. If not the very first time, it was one of the earliest occasions when Everest was identified as “Col. Everest” in the local press. The honorific would be applied to the wily attorney much more frequently in 1880 when he would run for a seat in the State Senate in Kansas, where voters were less likely to know how he had acquired the folksy yet prestigious title.
Joining the Atchison G.A.R. Post late in life, Everest claimed that he had first served a hitch with the 57th Indiana Infantry in 1861, then joined the 2nd Minnesota Cavalry in ’63 as a private, advancing to the rank of captain. His G.A.R. membership roll contains no mention of any brevet promotion to a higher rank.
According to the voluminous Minnesota In The Civil and Indian Wars 1861-1865, published in 1889, Aaron S. Everest was Captain of “C” Company from its formation, not through promotion. The regiment did see numerous brevet promotions for exceptional service during the war, with three men receiving the brevet rank of lieutenant colonel - though none of these went to Capt. Aaron S. Everest during his term of service. Everest’s brief military career was apparently undistinguished, his name appearing only once in the entire 844-page volume about his regiment.
There also seems to be no record of his service in Indiana’s or any other state’s infantry, leading us to conclude that it may have been only late in the war, after the key Union victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg, when Aaron S. Everest finally picked a side.
A sharp lawyer with political ambitions, Everest surely realized that a war record might be necessary to polish his image with voters in the postwar climate. The timely formation of a 2nd Regiment of Minnesota Cavalry in 1863 gave him the opportunity to enter the U. S. Army as a captain with a relatively safe assignment in the West.
His enemy along the frontier would consist of indigenous hostiles instead of Southern rebels whose core convictions probably aligned closely with Everest’s own.
After the war “Col.” Everest returned to his law office in Mower County, where he would face at least one more whiff of scandal. In December 1870 a brief news item mentioned his arrest in a case involving a young woman half his age named Emma Chandler, a resident of Cedar City, Minnesota. This time the news item landed on Everest’s home turf, but in the Mower County Register, a newspaper which supported the democratic ticket, and offered Everest some cover.
Mr. Aaron S. Everest of this place, was arrested one day last week, on the charge of bastardy, made by Miss Emma Chandler, a resident of Cedar City - Messers. Page and Wheeler, attornies for the prosecution. We understand that the examination did not prove very disastrous to Mr. Everest, and that it is evident the suit was instituted for blackmailing purposes alone. Mr. Everest has since had the Miss Chandler, referred to, arrested for perjury.
While no further details about the case have yet come to light, there is at least one piece of convincing evidence that this story was more than a journalistic prank. Early in January of 1872, one James Thomas apparently tried to collect $7.00 for boarding “Emma Chandler in the case of State vs. Aaron S. Everest.” The bill was rejected for payment because Emma was not under arrest, and “consequently not a county charge.”
The upshot of the case may have been Aaron S. Everest’s decision to quit Minnesota for a fresh start almost immediately. He would stubbornly remain a democrat even after moving to dyed-in-the-wool republican Kansas, where he would nonetheless win a seat in the State Senate, represent numerous railroads, invest in undercapitalized small-town banks and plunder them, and live out his days in a border city named for a pro-slavery Missouri Senator and Border Ruffian.