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Case No. 2552. Henrietta Garrett did leave, however, a scribbled "request" to the manager of her investments, Charles S. Starr, who had increased the $6,000,000 left by Walter Garrett to $17,000,000 in 1930. Since then the estate has been fattened further. The note the widow left said: "Dear Mr. Charles S. Starr—Give you my estate and belongings which are named in my book per a/c the following amounts: Give to Henrietta G. Ferguson the sum of $10,000. . . ." Thus she gave away $62,500 to friends and servants, but omitted the residuary phrase: "All the rest I give to. . . ." Neither did she have witnesses for her note.
Stockbroker Starr and Frank G. Marcellus, who claims he is a cousin of the late Mrs. Garrett, quietly became administrators of the residuary estate, but four years passed before a public accounting was made at the instance of persons who became aware of the fortune. Two years ago, when the court was to pass on the audit, the fourth floor of Philadelphia's City Hall was as crowded as a County Fair, and Case No. 2552 of 1932 became a real problem for the Orphans' Court which William Penn set up 248 years ago. Within four months, 3,000 claims were filed, since then 14,000 more.
There have been murder and suicide connected with the case, a reputedly false will has been filed, new pictures stamped "Made in Germany" have popped up in family albums, the German Government has entered the case through Adolf Hitler's consul in Philadelphia, much litigation has been started, some of it settled.
Most important was the decision of Pennsylvania's Supreme Court excluding all of the relatives of Walter Garrett as claimants.
Orphans' Court was the name of a relatively obscure London justice hall after which William Penn modeled his Philadelphia court to handle estates, wills and trusts. Kingpin in any distribution of Henrietta Garrett's estate is stubby, scholarly Judge Allen M. Stearne, 54, who went to England to dig into the origins of the court in which he sits. No snuffer, Judge Stearne likes to smoke his pipe when out of the Orphans' Court, philosophize about his work. Says he: "We do have contact with the rattling skeletons and the filth and the slime, yet on occasion life's most delightful romances and amusing comedies are unfolded before our very eyes. . . ." Actual conduct of the hearings of Case No. 2552 was assigned to Master William M. Davison Jr., a Scotsman, and to Examiners Clinton A. Sowers and George Ross, whose fees in the case are expected to top $500,000.