The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1913-01-04
WEALTH is CONE
Wild Cat Stocks Left to Charity
Prove Worthless.
Millions DwindIe to S150,0O0 in
Few Years.

New York, Jan. 4.-Behind an action
begun in the supreme court by the exc
cutors of the estate of wealthy Mrs
Cornelia Storrs is the tragic story OF
the sudden dwindling of a fortune of
acme $4,000, 900 to less, than $150, Geo,
through investment in wildcat mines.
When Mrs. Storrs died last April in
North Salem her friends believed she
was twice a millionaire. The aged
widow herself was confident of it, and
In her will she made what she thought
to be "a great donation to two chart
ties-the New York Skin and Cancer
hospital and a new school for girls
which she desired to found.
Now the hospital is in the odd guam
dairy of being the probable recipient
of only 30,000 instead of the $1,000, 900
that was originally announced; and the
dearest project of Mrs. Storrs, that of
the girls school, probably will never
be realized.
Speculated for Philanthropy.
After the death, in 1896, of her hus-
band, Richard A ,Storrs, for some
80 years deputy comptroller of New
York, Mrs. Storrs devoted herself to
philanthropy. Her fervent wish was to
leave at her death a huge fortune for
her pet charities. She was not con-
tent with letting her large estate grow
OF its own impetus, and was drawn
by the honeyed promises of mining
promoters into buying large bundles
of stock, for which meteorlike rise in
values was prophesied.
Mrs. Storr's complete faith in the
fortune-making powers of the gold and
silver mines in which she invested was
due in part to DR.. r. S. Fowler. This
physician promoter. she believed had
cured her of a longstanding disease,
and In her gratitude she allowed her
self to be bewildered into his dazzling
schemes hot
Had Faith in SwindIer.
Even when he was arrested on indict-
ments for larceny, and held in $4,000 ball.
she put up the bail for him. When he
disappeared, she paid it. losing the small
fortune without a whimper. confident
that he would return and explain every
thing satisfactorily. She also continued
to believe in her stocks and bonds, held
ing them for her charitable endowments.
But Fowler never returned, and her certtt-
ficates are now gathering dust in an old
store room, utterly worthless.
When the executors of the estate,
George E. Butterworth and her husbands
half-brother, Henry B. Storrs, went over
her properties a short time ago, they
found that she had stored away thou
sands and thousands of stocks and bonds
of mining schemes that never eventuated.
There was not single instance, in fact
of one certificate being worth the paper
that it was printed upon.
Houses Are Her Estate.
The property of value consisted almost
entlTely OIL TWO houses on Mulberry street,
opposite the old police headquarters, sew
cral houses on West One Hundred and
Eighth street and land in Newark.
II doubt whether the whole estate that
Mrs. Storrs left amounts to $150,oOo, said
Mr.. Butterworth. ''The announcement
that she had left 100000. about half of
which was to go to the Skin and Cancer
hospital, has worked great harm upon the
institution. The public believed that the
hospital had acquired a great fund and
did not need subscriptions, at just the
time when it required them most to carry
on its humanitarian projects. People
stopped giving.
s'The action in the supreme court now
pending is to see whether the section in
reference to the girls school is valid
trust