Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 February 1912 — TALES of COTHAM AND OTHER CITIES [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

TALES of COTHAM AND OTHER CITIES

“Cat’s Soul” Is Involved in Big Suit

NEW YORK. —As if a page had been torn from the old Knickerbocker “blue book” and its personages summoned to court, was the remarkable assemblage before Surrogate Fowler when the contest to set aside the will of Maria'L. Campbell, who left a $2,000,000 estate to four favorite cousins, was continued. In the forty or more men and women of aristocratic ancestry Who seek to break the octogenarian spinster’s will there were stately Van Rensselaers, proud Livingstons, Crosbys; Campbells, richly gowned; Townsends, with lorgnettes *and splendid furs; Scudders and Berrys and others who go to make up “old New York.” Many of the women, worn by age, gOßslpped and greeted others they had not met for years. A woman who believed that a cat had a soul, and who believed that the.

soul of her long dead sister Katherine was "still upstairs,” was not in her proper mind, the aristocratic contestants hold, to make a will. Mrs. Killaen Van Rensselaer, her son Stephen and William B. Blackwell, interested parties to the contest, have testified to acts of irrationality or Intimated that their relative was not of sound mind. Blackwell told of calling on Howard Townsend, Miss Campbell's man of business, and telling him the relatives Intended to contest, as they knew Miss Campbell was of unsound mind, and in reply Mr. Townsend had remarked: "I shall consider any contest as a reflection upon me personally.” It developed that Mrs. Campbell, sister-in-law of Miss Campbell, had found many past due dividend checks and coupons in the rooms of the testatrix. The entire amount so found footed up nearly $136,000, and some of the checks were three or four years old. It also developed that on December 14, 1905, a check for SIOO,OOO, and again, on November 19. 1906, ft check for $250,000 had been given by Miss Campbell to her brother.