Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1895-07-04

| He said that he had admitted to the
| company that their charges were true
and that If the suits were allowed to
come to trial the company would yat
| Judgment against them, which woufd
| entirely wipe out all the assets of the
| FISK estate and leave the widow pen
nilesS. Mr.. Gould told Mrs. Fisk that
II she concluded to fight the company
she would have to give evidence that
would be in favor of the company. and
| that Judgment against her. or rather
| against the estate, would be inevitable.
| He said, however, that the Erie Off
Gals were disposed to be lenient. and
that they had agreed, if Mrs. Fisk and
himself would deed over to the com
pany by way of restitution the
| Twenty-third and Tweutv-fourth street
property, that the suits would be dis
continued"
Mr.. Clark and Mrs Fisk talked over
the matter with their legal adviser.
All believed at the time that Gould
was acting in good faith. eve had no
suspicion that Mr. Gould and the Off
Gals of the Erie railroad would enter
into conspiracy to strip the widow of
their former master of all his. vast
fortune and divide it among them
selves. We believed that he was act
ing fairly toward us, and we accented
what seemed to us the lesser of two
evils. 1t seemed to me that the cues
ton was whether we would sacrifice
part or lose the whole"
SO Mrs. Fisk and Mr.. Clark took q
carriage and drove down to the office
of Mr.. Barlow, where the transfer was
made. Mr.. Clark corroborates Mrs.
FiskS statement that a further con
sideration of $4,000 was agreed to by
Mr.. Gould. He also corroborates her
additional statement that this was
never paid.
Nor did Mrs. Fisk" he says, lever
receive from anybody one cent of con-
sideration for signing away that vast
property
There is a curious sequel to this
story. The Grand opera house prop
erty was purchased in 1868 by Could
and Fisk for $1,000 After the agree
ment made between Gould ana Mrs
Fisk they jointly transferred the same
property to Peter H. Watson, presi-
dent of the Erie Railway canal This
deed was dated December Is. 1872. A
marvellous feature of the transfer is
that the nominal consideration paid by
Peter II. Watson was S1,2OOOOO, al
most double the amount for which the
property had been purchased four
years before.
Nine years more passed. Then on
December, 1881, a third transfer oc-
Cured. The Erie railroad sold back
to Mr.. Gould the property they had
acquired in 1872. They sold it back,
not for the $1,200,000 they had paid,
but for 100000, exactly the sum for
which Could and Fisk had originally
acquired it. Such, at least, is the
story told on the face of the deeds as
recorded in the Office of the register Of
deeds in New York. Surely, here is an
extra ordinary fiuctuation in the value
of real estate! But deeds, it is we'll
them is merely a matter of conjecture.
Whether the sum of S1,2O0,000 was
ever paid over for the property by the
Erie Railroad company, or whether the
real consideration was something more
valuable, waiver of unpleasant
CLANS, no lawyer, no real estate agent
can determine without an esoteric
knowledge of the facts.
But this much is at least believed in
Wall street. By his act of ''restitu-
ton" Jay Gould was enabled to speCu-
late in the stock of the Erie railroad
and win back more than the value IF
the Grand opera house. Not a penny
of the fortune so made found its way
to Mrs. Fisk.
"A further problem is presented by a
calm review of all the facts. Colonel
Fisk is well known to have owned a
large block of Erie stock. Only few
days before his death Colonel Fisk.
made a statement to this effect to Will
liam III. Morgan. The amount is cur
rently reported TO have been 5000
shares. Their total value at 500 per
share would have been $780, O00-more
than enough to have soothed the de-
Ginning years Of his widow. But
neither that lady, nor her relatives, nor
her business representatives, have ever
been able to discover a trace Of these
enormous holdings. Where have they
disappeared?