AUce’s Last WiU
and Sad Testament
By Phyllis Makuck
T ofr T
Reflections of Pine Knoll Shores
A slightly longer version of the following article with graphics appears in the Pine
Knoll Shores history blog at pineknollshistory.blogspot.com.
Alice Hoffman, owner of a large section of Bogue Banks including land that became
Pine Knoll Shores, left us many documents, including an unpublished autobiography,
stacks of ledgers and budgets, shopping lists, remodeling blueprints, inventories of her
possessions, letters, legal papers and, finally, a Last Will and Testament. Unlike most
modern-day wills, Alices is more typical of an earlier age when writing a will was a final
opportunity to right perceived wrongs. Hers went through several revisions.
Alice began writing her final will or, at least, the version preserved by her attorney,
Frank Wooten of Greenville (NC), about five years before her death. The document is
dated February 21,1948. She was 86 years old.
The will has 15 numbered subsections and six codicils, revisions that took place over a
three-year period. The last one is dated June 6,1951, less than two years before her death.
The very first two sentences of the first section reveal her state of mind, her obsessive
sense that she had been a victim of injustice. They also suggest her financial state of
indebtedness. She said: “I hereby revoke all former wills by me made and direct the
payment of my just debts and funeral expenses. 1 use the word just advisedly, for none
of the debts which have been collected through litigation have been owed by me.”
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Alice Hoffman around the time she was writing her will (c. 1950). The portrait behind her is of
her goddaughter, Mrs. Frank Stephens.—Photo from the Pine Knott Shores History Blog
The second section reveals three other obsessions—returning to France, reclaiming
her Chateau des Landes property in Suresnes and identifying herself with those who
fought in France during World War 1. It had been over 15 years since Alice had been in
France, but she imagined the possibility that she might be buried there in the American
Veterans Cemetery. She was, of course, not a veteran.
This delusional train of thought continues. She could not seem to control herself
from recounting events that led to the French governments acquisition of her property.
Actually, all evidence suggests the legal battle had been lost long before. Alice, according
to her own financial accounts, had accepted a settlement payment of about $80,000 for
this property, which she had bought for about $20,000. She, of course, had remodeled at
a cost of about $20,000, but claimed in her will that the Chateau des Landes estate was
worth $160,000. She had no chance of reclaiming it. That fact did not, however, keep her
from willing that one of her French lawyers, Maitre J.J. Retouret, build a house for his
family on the land and that “Eugene Millington-Drake and his sister,” Jessie, whom she
identified as “my very dear friends,” inherit the Chateau des Landes estate.
With her mind still very much in France, she began to think about all the personal
property she had left behind, some dating back to the house she had rented for 27
years on the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne. She thought of her precious jewelry, some
diamond pieces, a “cabachon emerald pendant, my wedding present from Ellis, and
various other precious family stones”; her silver, stored in “an old sea captains chest”;
her wine from various cellars around Paris; furniture stored in a Paris garage, which,
she said, “is stuffed to bursting.”
But, again this was property she no longer had. She had used part of the $80,000
she had received for her Suresnes property to pay Boris Lepkowski to take her Bois de
Boulogne treasures out of the Credit Municipal in Paris and secure them at his Paris
home. Fearing a German invasion, he left Paris and brought some of her jewels with him
to Monte Carlo. She also had paid him to remove wine from her wine cellar and store it in
his Paris cellar. All she had from him were receipts—no real assets to give to heirs.
(Continued on page 20)
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