HUMBLE SHOPKEEPER TO MILLIONAIRE.

Evening Star, Issue 14053, 7 May 1909, Page 3

HUMBLE SHOPKEEPER TO MILLIONAIRE.

A grey-haired woman of sixty-three, who was selling bread and faggots in a humble shop in Green street, Northampton, is the heiress to a fortune which has come to her under remarkable aiid romantic circumc is rs Elizabeth Bird, the wife of Richard Bird, a baker, and, according to the will of her father, the late Mr Samuel H. Roebuck, a millionaire wire manufacturer of Aew York, she is to receive the bulk of’his estate, estimated at more than £500,000. The dead millionaire, who began life as a cabinetmaker, was a native of Leicester, kitty-five years ago he left Mrs Bird—then a gin or eight—and her mother and went to America. He took out several patents for the manufacture of wire, and they eventually made him a rich man. Seven years ago ac-cording-to the story related by Mrs Bird’ Mr Roebuck communicated with his sister, Miss Lucy Roebuck, of Richmond row, Leicester, and asked her to find Mrs Bird, if she were still Imng. The only clue he could give was that Mrs Bird’s husband had been a contectioner in Northampton. After Mrs Bird was found, her photograph was sent to Mr Roebuck. He arranged for an annuity of £52 to be paid to her through a London assurance society,- and he wrote to her frequently. In one letter, which Mis Bird received a year ago, beginning “My dear daughter,” Mr Roebuck stated that he had been married four times, and added: It was no fault of mine that I did not marry your dear mother. When my first, love died I sent my brother-John to England on business, to bring her back, so that 1 could wed her, but he was “stuck up,” and would not consent to admit anyone into our family without a schooling. He promised that he would “ make her a lady.” Mrs Bird was married at the age of twentyeight, and has had fifteen children, ten of them living, men asked what 3he would do with her fortune, she said: I shall have a nice house and a pony and trap, and a woman in to do my housework. But there, I have not got it yet, and until Ido 1 shall go on working. Its come rather late for me to really enjoy it, she added with a sob, because I’m now sixtythree; but, thank the Lord, .this windfall—if it is true—will enable .us to have an easier time than we have ever had all our lives. I’ve known what it is to go round with a truck selling bread.

Mrs Bird is very popular.among the neighbors, and is known for her many little ams of kindness to those who are even poorer than herself. It is stated that owing to Mr Roebuck’s several marriages there are other claimants to the fortune.