Newspapers / Zebulon Record (Zebulon, N.C.) / April 9, 1937, edition 1 / Page 11
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Whif 17,000 are after |PH|d SHARE in the FABULOUS E£K! 'SNUFF FORTUNE" PIC By Madelin Blitzstein CROSS the ocean in Nieblingen, Germany, a young man be comes infuriated, whips out an old army pistol, kills the uncle A who has raised him from infancy, seri ously wounds his kindly aunt and then, half-mad, rushes out into the dark for est and commits suicide. . • . From Augsburg, Bavaria, a timid lit tle priest sets forth on a long journey to faraway Philadelphia, hopefully bearing in his trembling hands a birth certificate which he wants to establish as authentic. ... In an obscure spot in the Andes fountains, which a letter from this country takes 45 days to reach, a man waits patiently for the required papers which he will have to fill out and send back on another 45-day trip in order to establish his eligibility. • • • In every state of the Union, in France, Indo-China and 27 other for eign countries, more than 17,000 men, wooien and children are eagerly await ing the results of a contest which has already led to the hiring of 550 Phila delphia lawyers, 2500 attorneys from other places, a small army of genealo gists and handwriting fxperts, not to mention the accumulation of a vast store of “exhibits” that include old family Bibles, birth, death and mar riage certificates, pictures authentic and manufactured, German and French prison records, and daily mail that re quires the services of a special post man. This mixture of new and old tragedy and comedy, romance and love and hatred, fanv’y feuds and family affec tion, greed and avarice and lust for *ioney, has centered itself on a fortune made, of all things, out of snuff. No one knows how long it will be be fore the will hearings, which have now begun in Philadelphia on Thursdays and Fridays of every week before Mas ter William M. Davison, Jr., a Scots man appointed by the orphans’ court, will reach a climax. There awe those PIC T< .V - ' who estimate that the hearings will continue for two years; others say 15 is the more likely figure. OUT one thing is certain; whoever finally gets the fortune will receive far more than the $20,000,000 it is now valued at, since the estate, invested in Government bonds and triple-A stocks, has been increasing at the rate of $500,- 000 a year. The original $17,000,000, now grown to $20,000,000, was left by a little old lady, Mrs. Henrietta Edwardina Schae fer Garrett, who lived like a recluse and never came out of her brick house in the last 15 years of her long life. When she died, at the age of 80, in 1930, in \he home where she had lived since her marriage in 1872 without electricity or telephone and with very few friends or acquaintances, she cre ated the present treasure hunt by fail ing to make a proper last will and test ament. The only instructions which Hen rietta Garrett left to the world —she had no children and no nieces or nephews—were: “A Request: Dear Mr. Charles S. Starr—Give you my estate and belong ings which are named in my book per a/c the following amounts: Give to Henrietta G. Ferguson the sum of $lO,- 000. . . ." Thus she disposed of a mere $62,500 to friends and servants, but omitted the crucial residuary phrase: “AH the rest I give to . . .** And there were no witnesses to her note. Two years ago, when the orphans’ court was to pass on the audit of Case No. 2552 of 1932, the claimants who had discovered they were relatives, close M Jr mm .. ■j HL sflgL s Bk rWLAHRHgH WBr __ am • - Wm - r ■ ■ 1 W% m 1 W /m ■BBBBmbml vI Mrs. Katherine Elizabeth Schaefer Euler, 72, of Milwaukee, who claims to be an aunt of Mrs. Henrietta Garrett, comparing two family portraits in an effort to prove ber relationship. o and distant, of either the late widow at her husband, began pouring in and -furtrmg their shares. That marked the beginning of a Her culean struggle which enlisted several principal contenders: I—the Garrett relatives; 2 the Kretschmar and Schaefer families, the maternal and paternal lines of Henrietta Garrett; 3 Charles Starr, who claims that the wid ow’s quaint phrase, “Give you my es tate,” means that he is in reality the residuary legatee; and 4—the Common wealth of Pennsylvania, which asserts that since there are no close relatives ’Hpgjp (freed and Avarice the fortune must therefore escheat to the state under ttie intestate laws. TJOW the Garretts accumulated their fortune is a story as romantic as the fight over the will. A member of the Garrett clan came to Philadelphia with William Penn in 1682 and started a modest tobacco shop near the docks of the new city, where he sold snuff as well as fancy snuff boxes to the young men of the town. In time the Garrett snuff became so popular that the Garretts began to manufacture it and prosper from it; finally, less than a century ago, the firm of William E. Garrett Sc Sons was formed. That William E. Garrett had four children: two sons, William Evans Garrett, Jr., and Walter Garrett, and two daughters, Julia and Elizabeth. When William Evans Garrett, Sr., died, he left his fortune equally to his two sons, one of whom was married to the Henrietta of the present contest; to his daughters he left nothing but the instruction that their brothers should care for them. When William, Jr., died, he left his money to his two sisters; when Elizabeth died, she bequeathed hers to Julia. And when Julia died, she left her $12,000,000 fortune to Isaac Tatnall Starr as a sort of reward for his faithful services and advice. All this does not tell how Henrietta came to be part of the Garrett tribe and fortune. To trace her lineage is at present no easy matter. One thing is certain: she was born to Christopher Schaefer and his wife, Henrietta Char lotte Kretschniar Schaefer, in 1849, and that she and Walter Garrett were mar ried in 1872. They lived in Plaladel phia. Next door to them lived John C. Schaefer, Henrietta’s brother, who died in 1913, leaving $360,000 and no will. All he left was “a request," giving cer tain bequests to the Marcellus family and the balance “to you, dear sister, Henrietta. Do with it whatever may please your fancies. Your loving broth er.” Henrietta renounced the right to letters of administration and requested the appointment of Charles S. Stan and a bank. The outstanding tragedy so far was the shooting of Loreriz Schaefer. 56. and his wife, by their nephew. Ludwig Schaefer, in Nieblingen, Germany, after young Ludwig had returned from a trip to America in April, 1935, to see about the will case. Ludwig wanted Lorenz to pay the expenses of the trip: l/j --renz refused; Ludwig killed Lorenz wounded his wife and killed himself
Zebulon Record (Zebulon, N.C.)
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April 9, 1937, edition 1
11
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