Tending the Family Tree

Sylvia Wilks of New York died in 1951 leaving almost $100 million, most of it to charity. But she also hired a genealogist to find ten distant relatives, and they received $100,000 each--a total surprise, as she’d never called them before her death.

Fowl Play?

More than a century ago, when the law smiled more kindly on bequests to animals, one woman left hundreds of thousands of dollars to her two canaries. One died shortly after the will was read, and the other was suspected of maneuvering to double his share of the inheritance. The birdy beneficiary was exonerated by an autopsy on his unfortunate feathered friend.

Will O’ the Wisp

Hitler’s will, written in his bunker in April 19, 1945, allowed for all the contingencies.

“My possessions, insofar as they are worth anything, belong to the party, or if this no longer exists, to the state....If the state, too, is destroyed, there is no need for any further instruction on my part.” Named as executor: Martin Bormann.

Tarnished Legacies

While the rich or infamous often use their bequests to craft a posthumous public image that’s nobler than their real lives (robber baron-turned-philanthropist J. P. Morgan is a good example), sometimes it works the other way. That great and irascible curmudgeon, columnist H. L. Mencken, left his papers to the New York public library (30,000 documents) and his diary to a library in his beloved Baltimore, both with the provision that they not be made public until years after his death. Of course, when his private writings appeared a few years ago, they revealed a troubling streak of anti-Semitism that tarnished the great writer’s reputation.

President Franklin Roosevelt’s infidelity was revealed to the public by a bequest to “my friend, Marguerite A. LeHand,” of reasonable expenses (as determined by the trustees) for Missy’s health care. Cruelly, the money was to be paid out of Eleanor’s trust account.

Lon Chaney’s will revealed the existence of a heretofore unknown first wife who was actually the mother of his son--though the actor had concealed that fact for decades. The first wife was finally found, working in a field, and her situation wasn’t much eased by the $1 Chaney left her, presumably to disinherit her.