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Cornelius Jeremiah, the second son, proved an embarrassment almost from the beginning, a point the Commodore never let him forget. He suffered from epilepsy, which his father took to be a mental illness and a mark of weakness. A failure in several different business ventures, Cornie, as he was known, repeatedly leaned on his famous last name to procure loans and lines of credit, which he then squandered by gambling. Twice the Commodore had him committed to what were then called “lunatic asylums,” and when those institutions proved unable to prevent financial and moral laxity, the Commodore resorted to warning friends and business associates away from him. “There is a crazy fellow running all over the land calling himself my son,” the Commodore was quoted as saying. “If you come into contact with him, don’t trust him.
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