The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-07-23
MILLIONS WITHOUT OWNERS
NO HEIRS TO BE FOUND
Property in New York City That Belongs to Un-
 knoWns.

berlain of New York city, and the State treasurer awiting owners, and that lawyers are working on the task of searching for heirs for these funds all the time, succeeding or failing in this task in the most unusual ways?
 There is $6,OOO,OOO in the hands of the city chamberlain alone, which would be given over to the heirs of the people who died and left the money if those heirs would only appear. An other odd things, do you realize that some of the most valuable property in New York city is not improved and remains occupied by ramshackle build ings because the owners have disap- peared and that large rents are col lected by people who have no right whatever to them?"
 The speaker was lawyer, who makes a speciality of finding lost heirs to estate and owners of bank ac- counts who have disappeared. T of ten think that no man gets so strong an impression of the twisting paths of life, of the obscure eddies into which people drift, and of the mysterious ways in which they can be murdered or die in lonely places, or just sink out of the current of life and disappear, as a lawyer engaged in such work as this,' he went on. Dozens of men have disappeared in this way in cases which I have investigated. Who knows whether they have been knock ed on the head or have taken to the river or have changed their names, al- though without apparent motive to do so, and are quietly living in some re- tired hamlet?
 If you came into contact with such cases as I have before me day in and day out, you would wonder, too, what becomes of all these people that were we'll known and prominent one day and the next day have disappear
 ed as utterly as if the earth has open- ed and swallowed them up.
 "An odd case I remembered--not the oldest, but still rather out of the or dinary--was that of Belgian artist named Jean van der Stock He land ed in this country in 1885, when he was about 30. He was d portrait paint CT and soon after arriving here re- celved numerous and lucrative com
 missions and in short was on the high tide of success in no time. He had a studio and living rooms in Waverley place fixed up in bizarre fashion, and | 1t was a favorite stunt of his friends to have tea there every afternoon and rabbit suppers in the evening and that sort of thing.
 Tn 1892 he hired safe deposit box
 from Broadway company and put in
 it between $5,OOO and $1O,,OOO worth of
 securities. The next day he dlsap- peared. We have hunted for him ever
 since, but in vain. We have found his
 old mother, who had not heard from him for three years before his death.
 The trust company would like to hand
 the securities over to her, and she is
 in poor circumstances, but 1t cannot do
 so as things are.
 What was his fate? Did he volun-
 tarily disappear and simply forget the Imoney? Or was he knocked on the
 head in some brawl along the water l front as the end-up of crazy spree l Or was he suddenly stricken with
 aphasia and is he living in some in-
 terior city or perhaps right here in
 New York? Who knows? No one has
 ever been able to find any trace of his
 whereabouts or any proof of his death. About the largest fortune I know to
 have been tied up by lost heirs is that
 of William A. Kinelly, a wealthy
 wholesale grocer of this city, who died l in 1868 Kinelly had a brother Ed- ward, with whom he had had & vio- | lent quarrel about some trifing per- sonal matter. Both men were violent l Tempered and Edward ended the quar- | rel by telling his brother that he hop ' ed he would never see him again and getting out of town the same night. Kinelly didn't care at the time, but on his deathbed he had fit of repentance quite as violent as his anger. He wrote a will leaving his entire fortune 1 of close on to a quarter of a million dollars to his brother, disinheriting all | his other relatives.
 Edward was traced to Michigan and there the trail stopped. We have new CT been able to get any further The state treasurer took over the entire
 estate under the law and still has it.
 Did Edward resolve not to touch cent
 of his brothers money on account of their quarrel? He must have seen the Advertisements we published if he was still alive. It would be quite in keep l ing with his nature to ignore them and refuse to touch the money.
 "There are some queer cases of prop erty practically ownerless in the best business and residence parts of New York. This arises from the same freak
 that is doubtless at the bottom of many of the lost heir mysteries. The
 owners suffered a sudden attack of aphasia or just took it into their heads
 to disappear. The fact remains that 1 these properties are practically owner
 less through these disappearances.
 People who collected the rents as agents or others who learned of the
 disappearance of he owner have suc-
 ceeded in collecting the rents ever since, and are in many cases pocket-