IMAGINARY FORTUNE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20981, 18 September 1931, Page 11

IMAGINARY FORTUNE.

" EVERINGHAM MILLIONS." STORY WITHOUT FOUNDATION. 3STr. .7. S. Woodbury, of Sydney, lion, secretary of the Everingham Trust Committee, said recently that he had received a. letter from a London firm of record searchers stating that the story of the Everingham millions was a concoction. A committee was formed about two and a-half years ago to investigate the story of the fortune. "The whole question," said Mr. Woodbury, "centred on the identity of Everingham's father, and laborious search lias failed to reveal any trace of him. _ . "Everingham arrived in Australia in 1788. He had been a clerk in a solicitor's office. He was appointed policeman in the Green Hills, now Windsor, district. He married and had a large family, of whom seven survived him. There are hundreds of descendants. "No one knows what gave rise to the report that Everingham's father was wealthy," said Mr. Woodbury, but there seems to have been a persistent rumour after Everingham's death that he had expressed his intention of going to England to claim his father's estate. '1 ho record searchers believe the whole story is based on that rumour." "Before 1600," the searchers wrote, "there were certainly two or three wealthy families of the name of Everingham in England. They owned extensive estates in the Midlands, but in each of these families the lino ended in female issue, and the estates passed over to other families."