Swathed in fine sheets and with all of the attentive care that the Langham staff could provide, Hetty became a mother on August 22, 1868, a littieover a year after she had become a wife. It was a boy. The Greens gave him a long name befitting his lineage and honoring both sides of the family: Edward Howland Robinson Green. To distinguish him from his father, the boy would be called Ned. The boy was less than three months old when word came from New England that Judge Clifford had reached a decision in the Aunt Sylvia case. The news couldn’t have surprised Hetty. The trustees had a much stronger case all along. But the decisiveness with which Clifford, on November 14, 1868, rebuked Hetty’s claims left little room for comfort.
The most damaging element of Clifford’s ruling was to exclude all portions of Hetty’s testimony related to the mutual wills she and Sylvia signed. Clifford’s basis for this decision was a Massachusetts law forbidding one member of a mutual will from testifying in his or her own favor, unless the other party was also alive and able to testify. Although the case was heard in a federal court, Clifford cited recent precedent that federal will cases should respect the laws of the state in which they are tried. Because of this ruling, it has been suggested that Clifford, in essence, tossed out the great will case on a mere technicality. In fact, Clifford’s detailed, exhaustive decision went on for some nineteen pages and left little wiggle room for Hetty’s side on any element of the case.
Even if Clifford had admitted (and believed) every word of Hetty’s testimony regarding the mutual wills, it is clear that his decision wouldn’t have changed, because he was deeply unimpressed by the wills themselves. “The two wills under consideration [Sylvia’s January 1862 will and Hetty’s from 1860] are not mutual wills in any proper sense, as recognized in the law of evidence or the decisions of the courts,” Clifford wrote, because they were signed at different times and because Hetty’s will left no money to Aunt Sylvia.
Ironically, the portions of the case that had made it such a crowd-pleaser—the mysterious contents of Aunt Sylvia’s hair-covered trunk, with its yellow and white envelopes beingpassed in the dim light after Sylvias funeral; and the star-studded testimony revolving around the forgery issues—had little bearing on the decision.
Clifford did not care whether the documents were genuine or forged, he said, or who passed them to whom and under what conditions, because, “viewed in any light, and assuming all the papers to be genuine, the evidence fails altogether, in the opinion of the court.” But the forgery portion of the trial was not a total waste of time—as Clifford himself predicted in his decision, the voluminous expert testimony would prove “highly important” in establishing rules of evidence in future forgery cases.
Hetty responded to the decision through her lawyers a month later with a notice of appeal to the United States Supreme Court. But before the appeal process began, Hetty and the trustees reached a compromise. Hetty agreed that each beneficiary would receive his or her bequest, plus 6 percent annually from the date of Sylvia’s death. But just when the matter seemed to have been settled, Hetty held up the process over the matter of taxes. She wanted the taxes on each gift deducted from the gift itself, or from the capital of the trust, rather than from the income. In other words, Hetty did not want to be paying the taxes on the gifts from her own income. It was a fairly nit-picking point, and yet the debate kept beneficiaries from getting paid for another year; the court decided that the taxes would be paid from the capital.
With the great battle at last over, the munificence from Aunt Sylvia, stalemated for seven years, began to flow in 1872 and spread around New Bedford like whale oil from a leaking barrel. Electa Montague, the loyal nurse now
The most damaging element of Clifford’s ruling was to exclude all portions of Hetty’s testimony related to the mutual wills she and Sylvia signed. Clifford’s basis for this decision was a Massachusetts law forbidding one member of a mutual will from testifying in his or her own favor, unless the other party was also alive and able to testify. Although the case was heard in a federal court, Clifford cited recent precedent that federal will cases should respect the laws of the state in which they are tried. Because of this ruling, it has been suggested that Clifford, in essence, tossed out the great will case on a mere technicality. In fact, Clifford’s detailed, exhaustive decision went on for some nineteen pages and left little wiggle room for Hetty’s side on any element of the case.
Even if Clifford had admitted (and believed) every word of Hetty’s testimony regarding the mutual wills, it is clear that his decision wouldn’t have changed, because he was deeply unimpressed by the wills themselves. “The two wills under consideration [Sylvia’s January 1862 will and Hetty’s from 1860] are not mutual wills in any proper sense, as recognized in the law of evidence or the decisions of the courts,” Clifford wrote, because they were signed at different times and because Hetty’s will left no money to Aunt Sylvia.
Ironically, the portions of the case that had made it such a crowd-pleaser—the mysterious contents of Aunt Sylvia’s hair-covered trunk, with its yellow and white envelopes beingpassed in the dim light after Sylvias funeral; and the star-studded testimony revolving around the forgery issues—had little bearing on the decision.
Clifford did not care whether the documents were genuine or forged, he said, or who passed them to whom and under what conditions, because, “viewed in any light, and assuming all the papers to be genuine, the evidence fails altogether, in the opinion of the court.” But the forgery portion of the trial was not a total waste of time—as Clifford himself predicted in his decision, the voluminous expert testimony would prove “highly important” in establishing rules of evidence in future forgery cases.
Hetty responded to the decision through her lawyers a month later with a notice of appeal to the United States Supreme Court. But before the appeal process began, Hetty and the trustees reached a compromise. Hetty agreed that each beneficiary would receive his or her bequest, plus 6 percent annually from the date of Sylvia’s death. But just when the matter seemed to have been settled, Hetty held up the process over the matter of taxes. She wanted the taxes on each gift deducted from the gift itself, or from the capital of the trust, rather than from the income. In other words, Hetty did not want to be paying the taxes on the gifts from her own income. It was a fairly nit-picking point, and yet the debate kept beneficiaries from getting paid for another year; the court decided that the taxes would be paid from the capital.
With the great battle at last over, the munificence from Aunt Sylvia, stalemated for seven years, began to flow in 1872 and spread around New Bedford like whale oil from a leaking barrel. Electa Montague, the loyal nurse now
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