Fat Leavings

In Manhattan last week two great estates made front-page news:

George Fisher Baker was, except for Rockefeller, the last of the great

Century Titans. When he died in May 1931, the fortune of the man who had intimately affected the destinies of John Pierpont Morgan, James Jerome Hill, Andrew Carnegie and many a lesser light was estimated as high as $500,000,000. Last week the State Transfer Tax Bureau appraised it at $73,209,683 net as of the date of his death. But if it had all been dumped on last week's market, it would have fetched less than $53,000,000.* To get their hands on it, the Baker heirs had to pay a State and Federal estate tax of $13,000,000. George F. Baker's advice on how to get rich was to buy U. S. common stocks and "sit on them." More than 97% of his fortune was in stocks. He invested in but two bond issues--$2,000,000 in 31% Liberty Loans, $50,000 in Bear Mountain-Hudson River Bridge$8. His real estate holdings were less than $800,000; his life insurance, $85,802. Among his securities the largest single item was 14,000 shares of Manhattan's First National Bank, which he headed for 54 years and which has earned big money more consistently than any other bank in the U. S. The Baker holdings were appraised at $2,900 per share (current price: $1,680), making a total of $40,000,000. Other share holdings: 75,000 New York Central, 47,000 U. S. Steel common, 54,833 American Telephone & Telegraph (which last week were reported to have been sold), 32,500 Delaware, Lackawanna & Western R. R.. one share of Jekyl Island (Ga.) Club valued at $1,500. His chattels, appraised at $736,604, included a 16th Century Indo-Persian rug ($60,000); two Beauvais wall tapestries and four Beauvais panels ($155,000); Rodin's The Kiss ($20,000). Under the will as probated, the banker's son and namesake, now chairman of First National Bank, received the bulk of the estate and personal effects. Two daughters, Evelyn Baker St. George of London and Florence Baker Loew of New York, received $5,000,000 each. Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt. The original "Commodore" Corneel Vander Bilt left control of New York Central and $90,000,000 of his $100,000,000 estate to his eldest son. Dour, morose Son William Henry was the butt of his father's jests and contempt until one day he skinned his father on the price of a scowload of dung from Staten Island. William Henry more than doubled his inheritance, left $200,000,000 to be divided between his two sons, Cornelius and William Kissam. Last week when the will of Cornelius' widow, Alice Claypoole Gwynne Vanderbilt, was probated, liveliest news was that she had left her residuary estate to her onetime estranged second son, Brigadier General Cornelius III. His father had cut him off with a paltry $1,000,000 when he married Grace Wilson, daughter of a hard driving, onetime Tennessee storekeeper who made a fortune during the Civil War, married off his daughters to socialites. The total value of Mrs. Vanderbilt's was not revealed. She divided a $7,000,000 trust fund between her daughters Countess (Gladys) Szechenyi and Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney, three grandsons and two granddaughters. "The Breakers," her famed home at Newport, and her town house in Manhattan also went to Countess Szechenyi. A $150,000 legacy and funds remaining from the sale of the old Vanderbilt chateau on west 57th Street were left to Mrs. Whitney.

*Other notable estates: Payne Whitney $191,043,582 Thomas Fortune Ryan 135,164,110 Anna M. Harkness 107,052,494 Henry C. Frick 92,953,552 John Jacob Astor 87,212,791 J. Pierpont Morgan 78,149,084 Harry Payne Whitney 71,771,303

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