Democratic Sentinel, Volume 1, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 November 1877 — VANDERBILT’S MILLIONS. [ARTICLE]

VANDERBILT’S MILLIONS.

Mrs. Ue Baa, One of the Commodore’s Daughters, Contesting the Will—Remarkable Statements Made by Her Counsel. Hon. Scott Lord, counsel for Mrs. te Ban, who is contesting Commodore Vanderbilt’s will, made some remarkable statements in the opening of the case in the Surrogate’s Court of New York, the other day. Some of the charges which he made against Wm. H. Vanderbilt were of a very serious character. Mr. Lord, says the Times, admitted that it seemed hazardous to say that a man who accumulated $100,000,000, and was famous for his strength of Trill, had not the power to dispose of his fortune. Yet, there was not on record a more unjust disposition of a large estate. The deceased Commodore left two sons and eight daughters, who, under the statutes, were entitled to equal shares of the property. To one of his sons he gives $95,000,000. Both of the sons had equal claims upon him, and the one who had been practically disinherited, having been bequeathed only the interest ats percent, upon $200,000, had an additional claim to consideration because he had all his life been the victim of a disease which, although it had not impaired his mind, had yet been very painful. The Commodore during his life had not shown so much favor for his eldest son as his will suggested. When he called him from the Staten island farm, and put him forward in his railroad enterprises he was mere potter’s clay in his father’s hands. The Commodore had put his son, who bore his own Christian name, under a revolting vassalage. Here Mr. Lord made the first specific charge against William H. Vanderbilt, and asserted that he was responsible for his father’s will. The daughters were not treated in so unjust a manner as Cornelius by the will, but their injuries were scarcely less outrageous. The Commodore, for a long time before his death, was suffering great pain, to relieve which strong medicines were given to him, which were sufficiently powerful to weaken his mind. His desire to have his fortune perpetuated in his own name became a mania. Commodore Vanderbilt, Mr. Lord said, was addicted to a form of vice which had a direct influence upon his brain. Moreover, he was a sufferer from chronic maladies, Bright’s disease of the kidneys being one of them, and cystitis another. The last mentioned was the most painful and most dangerous disease on record. The agony which the Commodore suffered from it was terrible. It caused him to writhe, and he frequently acted like a woman struggling with labor pains. Medicine strong enough to allay such pain must have weakened his mind, and, on the other hand, the pain itself must have affected the brain. Sometimes the Commodore exhibited a very violent temper. In his fits of fury he paid no heed to persons near him, and created havoc among the furniture. Then he would become at other times cheerful and tranquil. That his intellect was weak, Mr Lord asserted was shown in the fact that he was a believer in Spiritualism, not in its higher phases, but in its lower types. He believed in clairvoyance; that the nature of his diseases could be discovered from miniatures and locks of hair, and that they could be cured by mesmerism. He spent, counsel asserted, thousands of dollars upon such vagaries. After his second marriage, in 1869, the Commodore became silly on occasions, and he was evidently entering his second childhood. Years ago he had been of the opinion that an equal division of a parent’s property upon his children was the only proper distribution. He changed his mind in his dotage. More than twenty-five years ago, said Mr. Lord, Cornelius Vanderbilt became enamored of a governess, and to get the mother of his children out of the way he had her sent to a lunatic asylum. William Vanderbilt was the only son of the old man who sided with him and against his mother in this matter. In talking of the affair the son said that he sympathized with his motetr, but that it was not a question of sympathy with him, but one of self-interest. The old man was bound to have his own way then, but he, the son, would rule hereafter. His father, he said, was bound to be ruled by a woman, either the governess or another woman, and be (the son) was determined to govern that woman. When the mother was released from the asylum by the officers of it, William H, Vanderbilt joined with his father in demanding that she live in another house. He obtained the entire control of his father by these methods. He lost all sense of justice and honor, and he made use of the Commodore’s susceptibility to falsehoods. His conduct toward his brother was always harsh and unjust, and was of late years worse than that. The contestant proposes, Mr. Lord said, to prove all these assertions, and also to prove that after his second marriage the Commodore, who had before been very harsh to liis younger son, thought better of him, and talked about giving him a large sum of msney to set him up in business.