A FORTUNE OF £2,000,000.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1233, 15 September 1911, Page 4

A FORTUNE OF £2,000,000.

AUCKLAND CONNECTIONS. (By Toleerauli.—Press Association.) Auckland, September 14. The unexpected inheritance of millions is a common enough happening, in the pages of fiction, but in real lifo it is of rare occurrence. A Press Association cable from London yesterday stated that Sergeant-Major Smith, doorkeeper of a music hall at Cardiff, and his sisters had succeeded to their brother's estate, valued at .62,000,000, the proceeds of an oil-well in Canada. One of Sergeant-Major Smith's daughters is Mrs. W. Clay, a resident of Birkenhea,d, a suburb of Auckland, whoSe husband is an electrical engineer employed in tlio city. Ho and Mrs. Clay have been living in Auckland for some years. The'unolo under whose will the relatives benefit was one of a family of four. Ho migrated to Canada as a youth, acquired a property on which he subsequently "struck oil," and in the course of time became a member of the Standard Oil Trust. His relatives knew that fortune- had smiled upon him, but had no idea that his wealth amounted to millions. The deteased millionaire married at an early age, and his wifo died some fifteen years ago. There were no children, and tho result was that his huge fortune is to be divided between Mrs. Clay's father and two sisters, one of whom resides in Australia, and the other in Plymouth, England. Sergeant-Major Smith has a family of five children, Mrs. Clay having two brothers and two sisters. A strange episode in the history of Mr. Clay's own life adds interest to the present roma.nce. His grandfather died worth five millions of money, and though there were a number of relatives to benefit from the estate, Mr. Clay's inheritance was a large one. As he was only a boy at the timo he had not tho control of the money, and by the time he came of age tho money had almost entirely disappeared.