People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 August 1893 — GAVE LAND FOR CLOTHES. [ARTICLE]

GAVE LAND FOR CLOTHES.

And Now the Tailor’s Heirs Get 9727,000 for the Keal Estate. The estate of the late Hamilton M. Ileuston was called up in Judge Coffey's court in San Francisco the other morning for final settlement. A web of romance has been woven about the circumstances attending the life and j business career of the deceased, touch- ' ing the manner in which he obtained possession of the real estate that at last became the basis of his great fortune, says the Examiner. Mr. Ileuston was in early times a tailor. During his transactions in the course of business a pioneer settler became indebted to him for a suit of clothes, and not being able to pay/ each induced his tailor to accept two fifty-vara sand lots in settlement of the account much against the creditor’s desire. These two lots were located at what is now known as the northwest corner of Market and Powell streets, and on them the Baldwin hotel stands. A year or two before Mr. Houston’s death F.J. Baldwin sued to secure a deed to the real estate on payment of an agreed price, claiming that right under the provisions of a written contract. Ileuston was willing to sign the deed provided he could get $1,000,000 for the property, but Baldwin said ho would pay only $700,000. After a long trial judgment was given against Ileuston, and he was ordered to make the deed for the amount named in the contract and offered by Baldwin. Before Ileuston was called on to comply with the court’s edict, and pending an appeal to the supreme court, he died and the estate passed into the probate court. Seeing that the litigation if begun again would be likely to last a long time, the parties interested made a compromise, and W. F. Goad, the administrator, was by Judge Coffey directed to deed the property to Baldwin on the payment of $727,500. To this Mrs. Lucy C. B. Ileuston and Mrs. E. L. Blunt, the widow and only child of the deceased, agreed, as did the collateral heirs. The written consent of Attorneys Boyd, Fifleld and Hoburg to this arrangement was also filed. Bald- j win paid the money and the two fifty- 1 vara lots, originally taken as the price of a suit of clothes, becamo his proper- j ty. The appraisers of the estate estimated that the property, if unincumbered by Baldwin’s leases and contracts, would be worth $1,018,000.