Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 303, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 December 1914 — Looks Like the Price Families Are Being Strung. [ARTICLE]

Looks Like the Price Families Are Being Strung.

The various Pride families in Jasper county are considerably excited at a claim (being made by some of that name that they are heirs to some very valuable property in the city of Baltimore, Md., that the land was leased for a period of 99 years and that the lease has expired and that they will all come in for a big thing when the split is made. Several meetings have been held and a number of the Prices have put up from $1 to $lO to help in the legal battle to establish their rights. It is said that some of the men of that name have been led to believe that they will get as much as $200,000. The Republican has seen schemes of this sort before and has no hesitation in pronouncing them frauds designed by schemers to get money from as many of the persons of the name as can be induced by a chain of plausible letters as can be induced to send. In the first place anyone should know that before the investees in high priced real estate pay their money they have the title to the land searched by the best lawyers and every possible flaw is corrected by legal procedure that will scarcely admit of distant relatives, even if actual relationship could be established, ever getting anything. A few years ago just such a scheme was worked with the Ball families, affecting real, estate in the “very heart” of Philadelphia The Balls got excited, spent lots of money, bought family trees which showed them to be of royal lineage and when they had all been worked just as much as they could the bottom dropped out of the thing. We be-

lieve that there was a scheme worked among the Wards to estab lish their title to real estate in New York. They are all fakes, worked up by schemers who prey on the credulity of men and women. It is hoped that the Price families hereabouts will try to ascertain just who the men are at the head of this scheme and then write to the postofflee department at Washington and find out if they are not operating in violation of the postal regulations. We say this in all charity to the men and women who are putting their time and money into this thing, for we feel that they are being’duped by some smooth swindlers.