Omaha daily bee., 1897-01-02
End OF A STRANGE STORY
Fanny Sweet and Rachel Brown; We're
They the Same Person7
A LOUISIANA COURT so DECIDES
Romantic nnd Tragic Career of nm
Adventures Revealed by Heirs
Contcstinp for u Snug
Fortune.

Contcstinp for u Snug
Fortune.
The contest over the succession OF Fanny
Sweet Mills, upon which the civil district
court of Louisiana passed finally on Tues
day, December s, brought to light a series
of stories so marvellous that novelist woull
| be accused Of sensationalism If he gave
them in any romance. They are told by a
correspondent of the New York Sun.
On January 6, 1896, Mrs. william Il.
Mills died in this city at the age of 40. She
| was the widow OF one of the most dis
tingushed members OF the New Orleans bar,
who had been the leading counsel in the
famous Myra Clark Gaines case, which re-
suited in this city's paying s2,OO0,O0O to the
Gaines heirs Mills fee in this case was
one of the largest ever paid, and made him
Independently rich, but he died soon after
| his success leaving all his property to his
| wife. Every one in New orleans knew who
| she was the notorious Fanny Sweet, who for
| thirty years had been the widest woman In
| the city, whose freaks, follies and wild
| oscapade9 had made her notorious, whose
| life had been one long succession of ad-
| ventures. She was a woman of "a when she
| met Mills, but such was the power she
eXerted over men that this lawyer OF fine
| family and OF high social standing and
| reputation at the bar made her his wife.
She was 20 years old when she died. and
| her death was a miserable enough ending
| even for a life so stained with sin and
crime. Mrs Mills was a wealthy woman,
| yet died of starvation. She had 100000 in
| bonds in her armoire, but died for lack of
+ food For three years before her death she
was blind but she was so filled with fear
that some one would rob her of her money
! that she lived alone. She was taken sick,
and, having no one to call the doctor or get
| her assistance or food, she lay upon the
| floor until she died of starvation. She was
found dead by a neighbor Her death re-
vealed the romance of her life and a sue
| cesson of tragedies.
| Mrs Mills, or Fanny Sweet, made a num-
| Der OF wills just before she died, in which
she left her money to several conspicuous
men in New Orleans. Most of them would
| have gladly foregone the money to avoid the
notoriety. She revoked all her wills just
| before her death and died intestate.
CLAIM OF THE STATE.
| The state of Louisiana laid claim to the
| estate and seemed likely to get 1t, when
suddenly two heirs appeared-Charles c.
| Brown, a respectable lawyer of Sacramento
| Cal, and Mrs Mary McVey, an aged widow
| of Huntington, w. Va, who claimed that
Mrs. Mills or Fanny Sweet was their sister
| haC0Cl BTOW0 IL SBGIlltu d luOiOuSuly
! improbable tale, for the state of Louisiana
| had traced back Fanny Sweets history and
| found that she was Minerva Seymour, an
| English barmaid, born in London in 1926
| The evidence that Fanny Sweet was Minerva
| Seymour seemed complete and indisputabe.
| She herself so declared repeatedly, so swore
| in her WILL in her marriage certificate, and
| in her relations, however confidential with
| her lawyers, she told the same story. She
was born in London she said of good par
| entage but had been left an orphan when
| young had run away from her guardian,
| grown up in the slums of Liverpool, had
| become a barmaid there and finally had
| come over to the United States In 1876,
| when 20 years old. Arriving at New York
| in the ship Waterloo, commanded by Captain
Allen, the state found several of her fellow
travellers on the voyage, who readily identi-
fed Minerva Seymour with Fanny Sweet.
She spoke, they said, with marked cockney
accent.
Here comes in the extraordinary and in
comprehensive part of the story, for the
claimants to the estate declare that Fanny
Sweet was their sister, Rachel Brown,
native of Rome, Lawrence county, o., and
descended from an old Virginia family; and
the court has decided. in spite OF the
frequent declarations Of Fanny Sweet her
self and of her friends, lawyers and acquaint-
ances, in spite of her wills, and her mar
riage certificate even in spite of her cockney
accent and her landing in this country from
Liverpool in 1896 that Fanny Sweet was
Rachel Brown, and 1t has awarded all her
property to the California and West Virginia
claimants. The court was compelled to
accept the Minerva Seymour episode as true
it was so clearly proved-but passed 1t
over as inexplicable, like the many
metamorphoses which Fanny Sweet INDUCED
in later in her life.
A FAMILY CHARACTERISTIC.
Rachel Brown was born in 1926 in Rome,
O. She ran away from home when Is years
old and was completely lost sight of for
years. but this created no surprise, for 1t
seems to have been the habit of the Brown
family to run away. Her eldest brother,
James, ran away few years before, and
was never heard of afterward Her eldest
sister Sarah also disappeared but turned
up years afterward in California after mar
riage and adventure enough to fill a book.
When Rachel, therefore, ran off, it was re-
garded perfectly natural, and no one
troubled himself about her The claimants
to the succession have tried to follow the
career of the runaway girl, but there are
many long breaks in their records. They
frankly admit that there are no traces of her
for two years, 1874 to 1886 No one has
ever been found who saw or heard of her
during that period. That she became Fanny
Sweet afterward is insisted, and 1t is equally
clear that Minerva Seymour was also Fanny
Sweet. The court fought shy of this di-
lemma. There Is but one explanation of ii.
The Ohio girl found her way to London in
some way. picked up the coclney dialect,
and picked It up so successfully that she
never lest it afterward There are some
absurdities about this theory, but it Is the
only possible one. 1t may have been Rachel
Browns idea of completely destroying her
former identity and cutting herself off from
her relatives. She played the part well If
this theory is correct, and yet her relatives
got her money after all.
Her brother and sister drop her career in
1874 and take 1t up again in 1916, when the
girl whose subsequent multiplicity of names
caused such confusion landed from the
steamer Waterloo. She drifted from New
York to New Orleans with a man named
Smith, and when she landed in the Crescent
City she was Fanny Smith, instead OF either
Rachel Brown or Minerva Seymour. Smith
married her in New Orleans and there she
was one of the gayest of the gay, and
notorious at the old Globe ballroom as one
OF the widest of the dancers. 1t was dur
b.g the hush times of the Crescent City,
when money was plentiful and morals were
at a low ebb. and when. amid the fevers
that then ragged there. the universal motto
was "a shoSt life, but a merry one" 1t
was a short life for Smith. who died OF the
yellow fever a year after his marriage.
leaving a widow of 2l with nothing in the
world.
AMONG THE FORTYNINERs.
New Orleans, lively as it was then was