Americus times-recorder. [volume] (Americus, Ga.) 1891-current, 1911-04-04
WOMAN STARVED With
FORTUNE IN BANK
New York Turns Up Eccentric
Creature

New York, April Soda Water
Frank" of No. 433 East Fifteenth
street, who says he once paid taxes in
Ia million dollars worth of property in
New York, but is now running little
second hand store, at more than sew
enty years of age, paid 81 yesterday
for the household effects of Mrs. Az.
gusta Freitag
She was the woman who was found
dead in her two-room fiat, apparently
of starvation, at No. 523 East Fifteenth
street one night last week, but among
whose ragged and broken effects the
police found money, papers and bank
books representing $4,000 to $4,000.
After the police and her brother-in-
law, F. Buergal proprietor Of the
Grantwood Hotel at Grantwood, y. J
and Mrs Sophie Grau, the housekeep-
er, had searched through the two
trunks and her bureau the mystery Of
why woman who had so much wealth
had hidden herself in a dark little rear
tenement on the lower east side was as
great as it was when the police first
discovered that she was an owner of
real estate and had a half dozen bank
accounts.
Her body was taken from the
Morgue to an undertaker's yesterday
at the order of her brother-in-Iaw All
day the housekeeper was wondering
what should be done with the many
cats that made the rooms of Mrs
Freitag their headquarters. She used
to pick up all the stray cats in the
neighborhood and take them home Of
ten she went hungry herself that they
should have enough to eat
Looking very much older than shc
really was, and dressing in frayed far,
ments of a fashion many years gone
out, she appears to have been a strange
combination of miserly greed and
open-handed generosity when sh
heard of some one who was ill. Her
brother-in-law could tell very little
about her life in New York
One of the mysteries unsolved was
the disappearance of her husband two
years ago. Herman Freitag, very old
and i'll, had made fortune with her in
his younger days in the operation OF
cigar stores, cafes and hotels in New
| York, but all their savings appeared tC
have been in her name, and two years
ago, after a disagreement with his wife
over something that the neighbors
heard them discussing for days. he
took 5000 and went away, hobbline
down the street on his crutch, for h
was cripple, the old woman watchina
him from the doorway and finally turn
ing away and going to the dark little
fiat to cry for days
One day she read in a German paper
of poor woman deserted and left on
sick bed with seven children, and she
disappeared for a week from the
house. A butcher boy found her, after
four days, with her dress pinned III
and her fat arms bare, scrubbing the
floor of the sick woman's room am
| feeding the new baby.
She went to a telephone and callet
up some number far uptown and {
woman dressed in the height of fash
ion came in an automobile and LEFT
food and clothes enough to put thu
family on it's feet again Then Mrs
Freitag appeared at her two-room faf
again and fed her cats
"She told me once in a burst of con-
fdence," said one of the neighbors
that she and her husband had made
much money in Wall street, and that
her husband had been a sporting man
in his youth, and that theirs had been
a wonderful love match. She was al