History of the Brazilian Court Hotel

Chapter 3 Elliott Foster Bishop—The Depression Years

Mulford announced that he would convert the BC into a seasonal hotel. According to Bright W. John- son, Mulford paid investigators $1,000 to look into the character of Elliott F. Bishop, the man he was thinking of hiring to manage the hotel. Bishop owned two small hotels on Long Island at the time. Mulford had first met Bishop at his elegant Seven Ponds Inn at Watermill, just outside Southampton, New York. Elliott Foster Bishop had been introduced to the ho- tel business when his sister Lucy Bishop married Ir- ving Terry whose father Henry owned the famous Irving Hotel in Southampton, New York. Bishop's grandfather Francis Bishop had been a Southampton farmer who served as a Town Trustee from 1852 to 1860. Elliott's father Jeremiah Halsey Bishop (1850 - 1894) was a Southampton builder who died when Elliott was only a year old. His mother Harriet Gretta Emmons was born 1850 and died circa 1927. Bishop, who had a high school education, went to work as a clerk for Terry sometime in 1911 when he was still living with his widowed mother Harriet Greta Bishop at age 18. By 1915 he was employed by Terry as a secretary according to the New York Census of that year. Bishop's sister Lucy had one child with Irving, a daughter named Elizabeth in 1911. Lucy does not appear in the 1915 Census and is said to have died in 1917. In the winter months of 1912 to 1914 Bishop came to Florida employed as chief clerk at the Indian River Hotel in Rockledge. Elliott married Beatrice Aurora McNamara on April 27, 1916 in Suffolk County, New York. Beatrice died in 1918 possibly during the birth of her daughter Beatrice Bishop on December 28, 1918. Elliott mar- ried second circa 1919 Greta Byron. It is not known if Elliott obtained ownership of his two hotels, the Seven Ponds Inn of Southampton and the nearby Hampton Inn of Westhampton, through Terry or through his second marriage to Greta (maiden name unknown). He was still employed by Terry in 1917 according to the World War I Regis- tration of that year. It does not appear that Bishop's family would have been able to afford the purchase of these established inns.

Elliott Foster Bishop at the BC

Bishop cannot be located in the 1920 Census, but appears in the 1925 New York Census as a "hotelman". In 1928 he and wife Gretta were finan- cially well off enough to take a month long winter cruise on the Cunard's Line Samaria out of New York. In 1921 Bishop became vice - president of Hampton Hotels Corporation which owned the Maidstone Inn and Maidstone Arms in East Hampton, Long Island. Bishop sold his interests there in 1930. By 1930 Bishop age 38 is shown as "manager, hotel" in the Census. He and Gretta have been married for 12 years indicating they married shortly after Be- atrice's death. Bishop was well on his way to becom- ing a successful hotel owner/manager at age 38. Elliott F. Bishop must have passed Mulford's investi- gation and was taken on as manager of the Brazilian Court Hotel in 1932. He would travel north to man- age his New York hotels in the summer months and return to the Brazilian Court in the winter.

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