The Portland daily press., 1892-06-28
Half a Century Ago Thomas Bean
Ran Away from Home.
NOW HIS RELATIVES IN MAINE
CLAIM 100000.

His Property Was Awarded Southern
Ciaimants-But Maine Relatives Claim
to Have the Better Right.
Boston, June 1.-The Boston Adver-
tiser tells the following story of case
which will interest Maine people:
Mr.. FIT. Crommett of the Suffolk bar,
will be missed from his law office in the
Exchange Building this week. He is in
the West collecting evidence in suit to
settle what Shall become of $4,000 900
lett by man who died in an obscure
Texas town five years ago, and which
Texas court has once awarded in the
absence of the true heir to some people
in Virginia and the District of Column
bia. Since that decision was rendered
the real heirs, most of them living up in
the backwoods of Maine, have heard by
accident of the existence, death and
wealth OF their kinsman, and the law
yers have been hunting up the facts to
prove their claim for the past three
years.
In 1915 a boy was born to the wife of
tough old backwoodsman named Bean.
in Hartland, Me. Hartland was then
farther from civilization than Alaska is
today. 1t took month to travel from
there TO Boston, and such a journey was
greater event than voyage around the
world today. If a man were migrating
from that part of Maine to the far West,
which then meant western New York,
he parted from his friends in the pre-
sumption that they would never meet
again. Usually they never did. Old
Beams eldest boy was named Thomas
Chesley. He was one of seven children.
He lived at home till II years old, bear
ing his part in the arming, wood-chop-
ping, stump grubbing and cattle-raising
joint stock corporation, which Maine
country family was in those days. When
II he went into the Kennebec woods
numbering, Soon after he went
to Bangor, learned and worked at the
ip-carpentering trade.
Here an event happened from which
all his future life dated Being frugal
and ambitious, he had large sum due
him in wages from his employer One
day his father appeared in Bangor. and
collected the money due his son, under
his prerogative as the father of minor
child. The young fellows wrath was so
high at this robbery that he vowed
Never To See His Father
again, and came to Boston, working Els
passage on coasting vessel he had
helped to build. His parting word to
his father was that he never should see
him again. He came to Charlestown and
stayed with warm friends of his family.
Here he was taken sick and came near
dying. They sent for his brother Mark,
who came from the distant home in the
Maine wilds, and nursed his brother
through long illness. On Thomas re-
covering, Mark urged him to return
home; he refused, with imprecations on
his father, the brothers exchanged jack
knives and parted. Mark returned home
and Thomas started westward. This
was in 1910.
TIE next thing heard of Thomas was
in 1889, when one of his relations saw in
stray paper that he had died two years
before in Bowman, Texas, leaving an
unclaimed estate of $1,000 acres of land
and $500, 900 in government bonds, mort
cages and money in bank, the whole val
ued at So, 100000. He had lived and died
a bachelor and left no will.
1t soon appeared, however, that the es-
tate had been claimed, resoutely and all
but unsuccessfully. Property worth So
900, 900 does not go begging for a claim
ant Two families, the Towards of Al
exandria, Va, and DORIS of Washington,
d. G., claiming to be the children of two
sisters of Thomas Bean, had claims in
the Texas courts to the dead mans mil
lions, and had, in the absence of other
claimants, got judgment uncontested
against the administration. The coun-
sci for the Maine claimants laugh at
their Southern rivals, and say that their
pro offs only make them out to be the
nephews and nieces of another Thomas
Honaire but not even a relation of his.
and further claim to be able to prove
that this second Thomas Bean never had
sister. So there is an element of hui
NOR in the case.
Which side is right will doubtless be
determined by the decision in a suit
brought
BY the Maine Claimants,
which is set for trial the coming August
in the district court in the State of Tex
as, a tribunal corresponding to the SUI
perior court of Massachusetts,. But the
case as they outline it is interesting.
They assert that they have traced the ca
reer of the runaway Hartland boy as fol-
lows:
He reached Fayetteville, Ark, they
say, the latter part of 1910, or the begin
ming of 1S41. Here he worked at his
trade of carpentering for time. In
1S43 he turned up at Bonham, and made
the Texas town his home the rest of his
life. Here he learned surveying. The
shrewd New England boy saw that the
man who could secure the choice of the
land that was then to be had by the first
conner was the coming rich man of Tex
as. Like so many real estate magnates
in new sections of country, he took up
surveying as the royal road to land own
ing, and such he found it, He began by
carrying the chain for surveyor, soon
acquired science himself and thus got
himself elected district surveyor. In
this office he accumulated his fortune.
When man employed him to locate and
survey the plot for which he held a land
warrant, the Yankee surveyor took half
the land for his pay. The knowledge of
the country thus acquired, too, enabled
him to speculate in land warrants to
great advantage. Late in life he was
heard to say that when elected to the