Breese, Robert Potter (1887–1958)
Education and Early Career
Educated at Harvard, Robert Breese enjoyed the life of the jeunesse dorée. His specialty was “the negro group,” i.e., minstrel entertainment, and he worked on social and entertainment committees with J. Henry Alexandre. Before the First World War, he crossed the Atlantic to work for the Peugeot Frères Sigma Auto Company in France as an assistant engineer (1909–1911).
The Breese Automobile
Sensing an opportunity in the growing automobile market, Breese set off on his own to produce a lightweight sporting roadster, intending to build cars in France for export to the United States. He built the 1911 Breese Paris Roadster, a teardrop roadster and a light speedster powered by four-cylinder Ballot and Fivet engines. Approximately sixty-five Breese roadsters were produced during 1911–1912, an only two known to survive today.
At the outbreak of war Breese joined the American Ambulance Corps, later transferring to the U.S. Aviation Service, where he attained the rank of lieutenant. Returning to New York in 1916, he became the Manhattan distributor for the Philadelphia-built Biddle automobile. His partner in Breese-Montant Motors was the French importer Louis Montant, and together they displayed custom-bodied Biddles at the 1917 New York Automobile Show.
That same year Breese announced his intention to manufacture the Breese Speedster (left), though production never materialized. Two years later he introduced another experimental automobile, a miniature racer powered by a 20-horsepower Harley-Davidson engine and built from surplus aircraft parts—a forerunner of the midget racers popular after the Second World War. When no investors were forthcoming, Breese turned to a steady engineering career with Bendix Aviation and later the General Bronze Corporation, holding several patents for power brakes and remote transmission controls.
Marriages and Personal Life
His first marriage, in 1915, was to Agnes Beatrice Claflin (1891–1967) (left). The ceremony took place in St. Andrew’s Dune Church, Southampton, at the same time that his sister was married in the library of their family home, The Orchards; the two couples shared a joint reception. Their only child, Beatrice Lawrence Breese, was born the following year.
The Breeses kept a winter home at Palm Beach, where their marriage ended in public scandal in 1928. Whenever one’s marital problems are given a full-page spread, one knows that divorce looms.
“Mystery of Mr. Breese’s ‘Ministering Angel’,” The Sacramento Union (Sacramento, Calif.), February 5, 1928. A full-page feature recounting the Palm Beach scandal that ended the marriage of Robert Potter Breese and Agnes Beatrice Claflin. The article described rumors of a “ministering angel,” a nurse or companion who attended Breese during an illness and was suspected of being more than a caregiver, prompting Mrs. Breese to leave Florida and file for divorce.
“Behind the Scenes at Gay Palm Beach: Exploits of Mr. Breese and His Mysterious ‘Tall Blonde’ Almost as Notable as His Father’s Famous Girl-in-the-Pie Dinner.” Syndicated feature article, early 1928. A companion piece to the earlier Sacramento Union story, it compared Robert Potter Breese’s Palm Beach scandal with the celebrated “Girl-in-the-Pie Dinner” once hosted by his father, James Lawrence Breese. The article portrayed Robert’s separation from his wife, Agnes Beatrice Claflin, and his association with a “tall blonde” as symbols of Palm Beach’s Jazz Age excess. Its illustrations—showing the mysterious woman, Breese and his daughter Beatrice in bathing suits, and a portrait of James L. Breese—made the family briefly notorious nationwide.
Agnes later married the Earl of Gosford, becoming Countess of Gosford. Breese subsequently married Ethel Johnson, the divorced wife of Dr. Eban Takashi Takamine (1893–1947), (son of the scientist Jokichi Takamine). In 1947, at the age of sixty-one, he married Agnes L. Packard (probably the same as Agnes Paszkiewicz).
Robert Breese Potter died in Freeport, Long Island, on September 12, 1958. He was 71 years old. He was interred in the family plot at Southampton Cemetery in New York, alongside his parents and siblings.