Mary and Howard

Late genealogist Mary Smith Fay almost didn't take the biggest case of her life. She recalled in a 1985 interview getting a telephone call from attorney Ted Dinkins.

He was asking for help. He had been appointed to represent the unknown heirs of Howard Hughes Jr., the eccentric multimillionaire who had died without a will, and he needed the assistance of a crackerjack genealogist.

Fay was certified by the Board for Certification of Genealogists in Washington, D.C. She also was an amateur sleuth with an inquisitive mind, a dry sense of humor and energy that belied her 60-odd years. She had been likened to Miss Marple, the matronly investigator starring in some of Agatha Christie's murder mysteries, and it was an apt comparison.

Dinkins pressed on. Was she interested in the job - possibly the case of a lifetime?

In retelling the story today, Fay blushes. "I said no; I was busy."

[Houston Chronicle, July 8, 1985]

Fay found enough time in her busy schedule to work on the case from 1977 to 1981. She helped establish the claims of twenty-two cousins and step-cousins, who were able to share in Hughes' estimated $2.5 billion estate.

To Err Is Human, To Capitalize Devine

William Devine has found a way to profit from his skills as a genealogist. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court recently declared him the rightful owner of a piece of land near Nantucket Memorial Airport that the town had improperly seized in 1968.

When the town took the property by eminent domain, it was listed as "owners unknown" on local tax rolls, even though there was an identifiable record owner, Lewis Popham Carmer.

Devine, a genealogist who specializes in finding flaws in land titles and then splitting profits with heirs who make successful claims on the properties, did not do that with the land near the airport. Instead, he bought the property outright from Carmer for $7,500 in 1985. [Link]

Hope for the Heirless

An eccentric aristocrat I've blogged about before thinks he's found someone to inherit his $15 million home.

"He is my new best friend," Sir Benjamin Slade said of Isaac Slade, frontman for the rock group The Fray who could be in line to take over his 13th century mansion.

"He seems to be a very focused young man and wants to have lots of children. We will get the genealogists working on it to see how closely related we are. I would love to hand it over." [Link]

The Great Many Pretenders

Here's a progress report on the search for an imaginary rightful heir to the English throne. Hundreds of hopefuls have submitted their bids, a quarter of them from the United States.

"As many of the claimants met the desired criteria, it's fair to suggest England could have suffered something of a power struggle," said a spokesman for English Heritage which is to put the claims on show at a new battlesite exhibition centre.

"We had a chap from Arizona who tracked himself back to St Margaret [a descendant of Alfred the Great]. A lady from California could trace herself back to Edgar and William the Conqueror and says she has a pair of handsome sons who would make perfect princes," the spokesman told Reuters. [Link]

The Unlisted Are Unlucky

Luis Carlos de Noronha Cabral da Camara was the illegitimate son of an aristocratic woman, and had no children and few friends.

So when it came to writing out his will almost 20 years ago, he asked a Portuguese notary for a copy of the Lisbon phone book and plucked out names at random.

Now, with the unhappy man having drunk himself into the grave, his randomly chosen heirs are receiving lawyers' letters telling them they can claim a share of his fortune. [Link]

The Windsors Can Rest Easy

Dr. Tracy Borman of English Heritage says that the search for Edgar Aetheling's heirs is for entertainment purposes only.

"We would stress that we are not trying to put somebody else on the throne, but we will give them all credit on our website which I am sure is just as good," said Dr Borman. [Link]

Do You Have Old English Genes?

English Heritage is mounting a search for the rightful heir to the English throne—"rightful" in an alternate universe where the Norman Conquest never happened.

Edgar Aetheling was named heir apparent by his great-uncle King Edward the Confessor but was not crowned when the King died in 1066 because he was too young. Harold II was crowned instead.

William the Conqueror crossed over from Normandy, defeating Harold at the Battle of Hastings. The teenage Aetheling later submitted to William.

English Heritage, which seeks to protect the country's historical environment, asks in its advertisements: "Are you of Edgar the Aetheling's lineage and believe you have a legitimate claim?" [Link]

It Pays to Keep in Touch

Back in the 1880s, former slave Matthew Jones paid $225 for a parcel of land on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. Now the land is worth millions, and 180 of Jones's heirs have banded together to reap the profits.

Some of the family members had approached attorney Horace Jones to help them clear the title to the property so it could be sold. Brown suggested that instead of selling, the family consolidate the title and form a limited liability corporation to develop the tract. The effort involved tracking down descendants across the country.

"The good thing is the family was large but they kept in touch with each other," Jones said. [Link]

Grasping for Heir

Some of those people you rub elbows with at the archives don't belong to the noble race of family historians. They're tracking down the missing heirs to estates worth thousands. Julia at Wie Immer has the skinny on these folks, having recently joined their ranks as a researcher.

I have a new job. I am a detective. I work as a researcher and solve mysteries by digging through really nice civil records centers. I will spend many many days flipping through huge gigantically enormous tomes of endless lists of names, alongside other older people who also spend countless hours looking through huge tomes of names. We even have a dance: pull, flop, sift, scan, slam, reshelve. If you showed up there with some Offenbach turned up full blast on your iPod, it would look like we're doing a synchronized dance: pull ... flop ... sift ... scan ... slam ... reshelve. Again. Pull ... flop ... sift ... scan ... slam ... reshelve. Pull ... flop ... sift ... scan ... slam ... reshelve. Again. [Link]

He'd Make a Lousy Realtor

More news today on Sir Benjamin Slade's plan to give away his Somerset manor house—this time from the New York Times.

Sir Benjamin says the new owner can't be a drug addict or a Communist, and "It's politically incorrect to say so, but he can't be gay, because he may not produce any children." Oh, yes, and he must be wealthy enough to fix the place up.

Slade's given up hope of producing an heir of his own, though he has made a deposit at a sperm bank ("they said I had nine months' supply, whatever that means"). And he's ruled out giving the estate to a close relative, none of whom take enough interest in their family history.

"If you ask any of them, 'Who was your grandmother?' 'What did Sir John Slade do in the Peninsular War?' they have no idea," Sir Benjamin said.

Slade himself came to own the manor under conditions less than ideal.

When he took possession of Maunsel House, it was a ruin, his surviving aunt confined to just two rooms.

"She lived on Mars bars and Milky Ways," he said. "She drank for Somerset. She had about 18 different driving offenses — hit and run, driving over a policeman's foot. When she died, she left £22.50, and she didn't leave it to me." Once, Sir Benjamin said, the aunt set the house on fire, hoping to collect insurance, only to have the fire fizzle out because of the pervasive dampness. [Link]

[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]

The Best Slade Plans Often Go Awry

When Sir Benjamin Slade announced last December that he would give his Somerset mansion to whichever Slade most closely matched his DNA profile, he didn't realize how many Slades would crawl out of the woodwork.

'I've had 10,019 letters from Slades living all over the world and the variety has been amazing: there is an Indian man in a Delhi jail who claims my great-great-grandfather had a fling with his mother during the Indian mutiny, and two black women in America who claim to be relations,' says the 59-year-old baronet. 'There are even families in Australia, who probably come from an ancestor who fled there in 1820 because he was unable to pay the upkeep of the 22 children he had fathered back home in Devon.'

So now Sir Benjamin is digging up his oldest known ancestor—Walter Atte Slade, dead since 1120—in hopes of collecting some additional DNA and winnowing the field down to one lucky cousin. Naturally, the outcome will be decided on television.

The television series, to be screened later this year, will move the 20 families who pass initial genealogy tests into Maunsel House with Slade. Each week, Slade, a genealogist and a DNA specialist will confer to nominate a family for eviction, until a single heir remains. [Link]

[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]

Who Wants to Be a Miserable Aristocrat?

From UTV (of Belfast, Northern Ireland), posted Dec. 21, 2005:

Aristocrat to give away 'terrible' mansion

An eccentric aristocrat is hoping to give away his 16-bedroom mansion to a complete stranger and then move into "the comfort" of a council house, it emerged today.

Without a heir to inherit Maunsel House and its 1,300 acre estate, Sir Benjamin Slade, 59, is desperate to find a distant and preferable wealthy American relative to take over his Somerset mansion.

The baronet will give a DNA sample to a team of genealogists, who will then search for the closest match among the 5,000 Slades living in the US.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

tags: genealogy, family history, family tree

Genealogy v. Church of England

From The (London, U.K.) Times of Oct. 29, 2005:

Brothers stand to make millions from 1841 ruling on Church land

By Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent

THE Church of England is facing a bill which could run into millions of pounds after it lost a legal battle over selling redundant church schools and keeping the proceeds.

The historic judgment in the House of Lords came after two brothers who specialise in genealogical research challenged the Canterbury Diocese over its sale of a primary school near Maidstone. Simon and Nathan Fraser acted on a legal technicality dating from an obscure 19th-century law.

Under the 1841 School Sites Act, landowners were encouraged to grant land to the Church for education, with the proviso that, if the usage changed, possession would revert to their descendants.

[snip]

The Fraser brothers tracked down the 18 living descendants and bought up the interests in the case from a number of them.

[snip]

Now their investment has been rewarded, as the diocese has been told it acted illegally and must recover and redistribute the cash to the descendants of Jane Mercer and Lewis Wigan.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

Deed Decision Depends on Donors' Descendants

From The Boston (Mass.) Globe:

Heirs sought to end dispute over park's use

Challenge to youth sports practices by former resident spurs paper chase

By Peter Martin, Globe Correspondent | September 4, 2005

Calling all Temples, Crockers, and Temple-Crockers. The town of Reading may be looking for you.

Reading wants to place the fate of its Memorial Park in the hands of people who claim ancestry to one of several families that donated the green space in 1917. Town officials hope the relatives can help resolve a dispute over who can use the park.

[snip]

[Park neighbor Mark Ford] went before the Board of Selectmen and demanded that sports practices be stopped, claiming the activities were disturbing the neighborhood.

Ford cited language from the original deed drafted 88 years ago, which established the World War I Memorial Park and its intended use. The deed prohibited activities at Memorial Park that "interfere with the quiet enjoyment of those whose homes are in the immediate neighborhood," as well as "playgrounds for football, baseball, soccer and kindred games, or any games that are in their nature hazardous, or require fenced enclosures or tend to draw together crowds of people."

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

Still No Solution for Heir-loss

From The (Hobart, Tasmania) Mercury:

Percy's $1.3m mystery photo

07aug05

A CRUMPLED old 1920s photograph of a Tasmanian man is the key to a $1.3 million windfall.

The man in the centre of the tattered photo is the elusive Percy Joseph Marsh who, if still alive, would be aged 102.

Victorian authorities are trying to locate him to help identify beneficiaries of a $1.3 million deceased estate.

They believe Percy is probably dead but want to know if he had any children.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

(Another) Aussie Loses His Heir

From ABC [Australian Broadcasting Corp.] Online:

George Francis Thompson - mystery man

Wednesday, 8 June 2005

Reporter: Paula Doran and Simon Wallace

If you're one of George Francis Thompson's descendants, then you could be in for a nice little payday.

Sue Macbeth is a forensic genealogist, and she's in search of one of George Francis Thompson's relatives - and the answers to some mysteries about his life.

"We know probably a reasonable amount from 1937 on, and very little from before 1937," Ms Macbeth says.

[snip]

Ms Macbeth was hired by the trust company handling George's estate to track down any of his relatives; the company needs to know where to direct his almost-million-dollar estate.

[snip]

The search will continue, Ms Macbeth says, until the mysterious Mr Thompson's descendants are found. If they can't be located - or if there are none - the money will ultimately go to the government. Given that it's nearly a million dollars, Ms Macbeth wants to find those descendants.

It's more than just the desire to see the money go where it belongs, though.

"I really need to find out who he was. I need to find people who recognise the photos and say 'that's my uncle' because I think there are people around who should be able to do that.

[snip]

So, if you think that 'George Francis Thompson' - or whatever his real name was - is a relative of yours, what do you have to do to claim the money?

"Come up with similar photos and tell me some of the story that I'm not mentioning - some of the early stories. I'd love to know who lived in number 138."

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

Aussie Loses His Heir

From the (Victoria, Australia) Herald Sun:

Loner's $1m up for grabs
By TONY RINDFLEISCH
29may05

A $1.2 million fortune is up for grabs as a result of the death of a Brighton recluse.

State Trustees have been searching for months for beneficiaries to the estate of William Overall, 76, who died last June without making a will.

Mr Overall never married and had no children. And the man who is the missing link in his life -- his uncle Percy Marsh -- has not been heard of for 75 years.

Mr Marsh was believed to have once lived in Mr Overall's house in Dendy St, Brighton, but no records have been found of him since 1930.

Mr Marsh, who would be 103 if still alive, is the sole beneficiary.

If Mr Marsh is dead, his children would be entitled to a share of Mr Overall's estate.

But State Trustees genealogy services manager, Rob Skilbeck, said searches of death, marriage and birth records in every Australian state had failed to uncover any information about Mr Marsh.

State Trustees had also searched war records, migration registers, cemetery and obituary documents.

[snip]

[Overall's] run-down weatherboard house sold at auction for $1.2 million in February.

Anyone with information about Mr Marsh is asked to phone State Trustees on 9667 6771.

[Read the whole story]

Note to self . . . invest in run-down Australian real estate.