Big Surprise

Most large college legacies, spotted as far in advance and nursed as diligently by their beneficiaries as prep-school football stars, are equally devoid of surprise. Last week officials of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute of Troy, N. Y., contemplating news of a legacy whose eventual value might reach $6,000,000, professed utter amazement. Said President William Otis Hotchkiss: "All I know about it is what I read in the papers."

What President Hotchkiss had read was the routine account of a transfer tax appraisal of the estate of Mrs. William B. Cogswell, widow of a rich Rensselaer alumnus who pioneered the Belgian Solvay chemical processes (soda products, coke) in the U. S., helped form giant Allied Chemical & Dye Corp. in 1920. Mr. Cogswell died in 1921, his wife last year in Manhattan. To her sisters, the middle-aged Misses Elizabeth and Florence Browning of Washington's Mayflower Hotel, the appraisal revealed that Mrs. Cogswell left a net estate of $4,266,548, plus two trust funds, each consisting of 12,966 shares of Allied Chemical and cash, each fund worth about $2,940,000. When either Miss Browning dies, her trust fund will go to her sister, who may dispose of it as she wishes at her death. But at least one fund must go intact to Rensselaer. Mrs. Cogswell set up the trusts because her husband did not will Rensselaer any money himself, imposed no restrictions on the use of either. Should engineering Rensselaer eventually get both, they would practically double the school's present endowment.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.