Errors of Will-Makers

Franklin Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 31, 20 March 1939, Page 7

Errors of Will-Makers

OTHER TIMES, OTHER CUSTOMS

PROBLEMS FOR THE TRUSTEES

Most people know merely that Charles Vane Miller left 500,000 dollars to the woman in Toronto who could produce the most children in the succeeding ten years, says a writer in the “San Francisco Chronicle.”

How many people know that he also left a huge block ol‘ shares in a prosperous brewery to a well-known Toronto temperance advocate ? That he owned a large interest in a race track which he left to a prominent churchman and reformer who was out to close up the place?

The unexpected should be provided for in drawing up a will, but it seldom is. New Jersey Zinc slock was just a name to a little old lady in a tiny rural village in New York State. Her husband had owned it, and in her will she left it to the town to maintain a liltle bell tower; perhaps buy a book or two, and start a small town library in it. Sbe died about 1913.

At the outset of the war up went zinc till in 1918 the company cut up the whole by declaring as a dividend 72 per cent of the company’s entire Capitalisation.

The town bought books until the good folk couldn’t turn around in the place. The town appealed to the Courts to use the accumulated money to build a modern library building. It was refused. The Courts sadly held that the widow had specified “that tower”; it was "that tower” or nothing.

Stephen Girard, a name on a cigar box today, was the wealthiest man in Philadelphia in 1830. lie was a famous old skinflint who had eccentric ideas about, education. At his death in 1831 lie left 2,000,000 dollars to establish a new kind of college.

The students were to be orphan boys of poor parents. Girard designed all the buildings himself, and made the architect build them out of pure white marble.

They were draughty, hard to heat poorly ventilated, and full of echoes, but they were built according to his plans without changing so much as a door-knob.

There was a wall around the property, 14in. thick and 101’t. high, containing two gates, both well guarded. That was to keep out ministers. No Ministers Allowed “No minister,” he wrote in his instructions, “of any sect,” was to be permitted on the grounds. This was “to keep the tender minds of the orphans who are to derive benefit from this bequest free from the excitment which clashing doctrines and sectarian controversy are apt to produce.” And that provision of the will has been faithfully kept.

Part of the endowment was a tract of land along the Schuylkill River. The trustees grumbled about paying taxes on it, but in 1850 a rich vein of anthracite was opened on this land and rapidly developed. Millions of dollars went into the Girard trust fund. In 1907, with an enrolment of 1521 students, the trustees spent 526,4.52 dollars for more marble buildings; since then, more millions. But even in the depths of the depression, with the vast

i ai. thracite industry crushed, Girard trustees still had 77,000,000 dollars of the fund intact and nothing much to spend it on. The great Benjamin Franklin left one-quarter of his net estate, about 50,000 dollars, to two trust funds to lend to apprentices who were working long years at no wages, to learn the trades of that era. They had to have something to live on; it was the heyday of the loanshark and apprentices sometimes had to pawn their earnings for years. Franklin set up these funds to lend out both principal and interest at 5 percent. At the end of 100 years, he calculated he would have 680,000 dollars in the two funds. He made strict provisions about what to do with this accumulated money. Boston was to use its share lo provide some new fortifi- ; cations on the Charles River. Philadelphia was lo build a municipal water system, ■which Franklin had sorely needed along with all the other merchants and residents of the old city. At the end of 100 years, the Philadelphia fund had only *90,000 dollars in it because of laxity in connections. The Boston fund was intact, with 391,000 dollars. But neither the water system nor the fortifications were built with Franklin’s money. Botli had been built many years before. The apprentice system had gone, along with the cobble-stone pavement.