GREAT WINDFALL.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18267, 29 December 1924, Page 11

GREAT WINDFALL.

£2,000,000 IN CHANCERY. ( FOR SYDNEY FAMILIES. (]TSOII OTO OWN COHBISPOKBIllT.) • SYDNEY, December 17. Many of the famous elements of Jarndyce and Jaradyce aro pre-sent in a case in which members of a Sydney family, have been interested for nearly 100 years, ana wuicn. is at last auout io ro, suit tii tne releaso trani" Chancery ot about £3,000,000 for.. distribution amongst several families, .iuost of whom reside, in and around CJydncy. All are the descendants of one ot the earliest residents of i'itt Town, N.6.W., and later oi Parramatta, now the western outpost of the city of Sydney. There are members of the family now sixty arid seventy yeara of age to whom the prospects of the huge wealth wilting in Ckanecry, has been the subject of hopes and speculation and much fruitless endeavour ali their lives and to -whom the adivice that .has just been received from Ihe families' representative in London that the claims have at last been established is like the realisation of some fantastic dream full of the deepest emotions. The £2,000,000 represents the accrued estate of the late John Robert Hobbes, a silk - weaver of Spitalfields, England. It has been in Chancery for about a century, and though many half-hearted attempts have been made to claim it, a definite move was not made until recent years. The beneficiaries are all descendants of John, son of the weaver, who came to Australia about the time that Pitt Town settlement was formed. He did not come bore of his own free will and accord, and he dropped the "e" out of his name and was known as John Hobbs. He knew of his father's wealth, and to what extent he should share in it, but for some reason known only to himself he refused to have anything to do with it. Moreover he was, at the time of his father's death, very comfortably off in the Hawkesbury district. When he died his estate was proved at about £3OOO, hut he had distributed .a very considerable sum represented in cash and property among members of his family. Those who have proved thejr claim to tho big estate aro all of the seventh generation, and the absence of a marriage certificate of th/dr paternal great-great-grandfather, who was thourrht to hare wedded in the Windsor district of New South. Wales, was the one big stumbling block that held their claim up for years. That has now, however, been overcome.