The Largest Museum Complex on Earth— Sparked by a Mysterious Bequest

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The Largest Museum Complex on Earth— Sparked by a Mysterious Bequest The largest museum complex on Earth— sparked by a mysterious bequest. 48 PHILANTHROPY Reprinted from the Fall 2018 issue of Philanthropy magazine (PhilMag.org) FROM THE UNEXPECTED AMERICAN LEGACIES By John Steele Gordon Many people have daydreamed about Hetty Green was that psychological receiving a letter one day from a lawyer to the estate. And sometimes surprise rarity, a genuine miser. Spending more informing them that they are the heir legacies involve more than wealth. In money than absolutely necessary caused of some distant relative they’d never 1987, Richard Wortley, a construction her great psychic pain. She once spent heard of. Suddenly they are rich. It’s foreman in Portland, Maine, learned that most of a night ransacking a carriage, almost a staple of Dickens. And it with the death of his second cousin once looking for a 2-cent stamp that had happens a lot in other fiction. removed in England, he had become fallen off a letter she intended to mail. The 1932 movie comedy If I Had a the fifth Earl of Wharncliffe, Viscount Hetty Green was also a born Million was about a rich man who, just Carleton and Baron Wharncliffe. The investor, indeed the Warren Buffett for the fun of it, gave $1 million to each fourth earl’s considerable estates in of her era. Born affluent, she took her of eight people he picked at random Yorkshire, however, went to his daughter. inheritance and used it to build one of out of the phone book. (The first name When British eccentric James the great Gilded Age fortunes, the only he picked was John D. Rockefeller, so Camden Neild died in 1852, he left one created by a woman. When she he tried again.) One recipient was a almost his entire estate of £500,000—a died, she left not one dime to charity prostitute. On receiving the money she vast sum in the middle of the nineteenth and made sure that her children’s checked into the most expensive hotel century—to Queen Victoria. This legacies were safe from gold-diggers in town and went to bed, alone. unexpected legacy allowed the royal and other threats. The charity she “The Millionaire,” which ran on family to buy the Balmoral estate in performed in her lifetime (biographical television from 1955 to 1960 and for Scotland. The Queen also kindly used a sleuths have uncovered a significant decades in syndication, had a vastly part of the inheritance to increase what amount) was entirely anonymous. wealthy character giving a million Neild had left to his executors, and to Her daughter Sylvia, who had no dollars to people he carefully selected. provide for his servants, whom Neild had children, pursued a different but also Each week, viewers got a tale of what ignored in his will. unusual charitable strategy. When she happened to the recipient. Sometimes When American Sylvia Green died at 80, she left her huge estate to the results were happy, sometimes not. Wilks died in 1951, she left an estate no fewer than 119 recipients. Some In real life, such twists are rare. There of $95 million. In today’s money, that’s were relatives. Three were universities really are detective firms, however, that equal to about $950 million. She was that expected bequests. But many of specialize in finding missing legal heirs, the daughter of Hetty Green, known, and then taking a percentage of their somewhat unfairly, as “the Wicked Historian John Steele Gordon is a Taryn Wolf Taryn inheritance in return for connecting them Witch of Wall Street.” Philanthropy contributing editor. FALL 2018 49 James Smithson never walked on American soil— but his crypt is well-tended in Washington, D.C. Some longtime employees of Wilks who had rarely seen or talked to her got benefactions. A gardener and an accountant, for instance, received $34,000 and $35,000 respectively. That became their unanticipated retirement income. Perhaps the most unexpected inheritance of all—and the one that had the most spectacular consequences—didn’t go to an individual. It went to a nation: the United States. James Smithson was born in Paris about 1765, where he was given the name Jacques-Louis Macie. The exact date and place of his birth are unknown, as he was illegitimate. His father, Hugh Smithson, was married and the Duke of Northumberland. His mother was the widow of James Macie, a wealthy citizen of Bath, England. The boy soon moved to England, where his name was anglicized to James Louis Macie and he was naturalized. He attended Pembroke College, Cambridge, earning a master of arts degree, and began to study chemistry and mineralogy. He the recipients were completely surprised, having had inherited half his mother’s considerable estate on her little to no contact with Wilks in the past. death, and after the death of his biological father, he For instance, a check for $10,000, entirely changed his name to Smithson. unexpected, went to Robert Moses, the parks Smithson was a talented amateur scientist, in commissioner of New York City. He endorsed it over an age when many top scientists were amateurs. He to a charity. worked and socialized with such great experimenters The Free Public Library of New Bedford, as Joseph Priestly, Sir Joseph Banks, and Antoine Massachusetts (the town where Hetty Green was Lavoisier. His work ranged from studying the born and grew up), was shocked to receive $1.2 mineral calamine, which was renamed smithsonite million. The trustees, according to the New Bedford in his honor, to determining the chemistry of human Standard-Times, were faced with “an embarrassment of tears. In 1787, when only 22, he was made a fellow riches.” The New Bedford government, however, took of the Royal Society, the most prestigious scientific care of that problem—the city council cut the library’s organization in the world, then and now. budget appropriation to zero. Smithson never married and in his will he left Another check from the Wilks estate went to his fortune to his nephew, but specified that if his Josephine Grinnell Smith, a distant cousin of Sylvia. In nephew had no children, then the money would a lifetime of overspending, Smith had run through two go “to the United States of America to found in fortunes, and was living in one room of a dilapidated Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian mansion when she received $100,000. True to form, Institution, an establishment for the increase and she ran through that money too, and died penniless five diffusion of knowledge among men.” Although years later. Smithson had traveled widely in Europe (he died 50 PHILANTHROPY and was buried in Genoa) he had never visited the Princeton University) in 1832, where he oversaw United States, and left no explanation why he chose the fields of chemistry, physics, geology, and biology. it to receive his fortune. But on the nephew’s death Taking the reins at the new Smithsonian Institution, in 1835, the U.S. Chargé d’Affaires in London he got the organization off to a strong start, then stayed informed our Secretary of State of the inheritance. there for the rest of his career. He oversaw construction There was initially hesitation among of the institution’s first building, the famous “castle” Members of Congress about accepting money, and on the National Mall in Washington. He edited the instructions, from a British aristocrat only a couple group’s first publications. And he worked to make the decades after his countrymen burned Washington. Smithsonian a major center for scientific research. But seven years after Smithson’s death President In addition to conducting research, the Andrew Jackson finally dispatched Richard Rush, Smithsonian was right from its founding an son and grandson of signers of the Declaration of important repository of artifacts. The United States Independence, to collect the windfall. Rush returned Exploring Expedition that circumnavigated the globe in 1838 with 11 chests containing 104,960 British between 1838 and 1842 returned with a huge number gold sovereigns, each denominated as one pound of animal skins, plant specimens, shells, and other sterling. In today’s money that was about $11 curiosities from across the seven seas. These became million. But the sovereigns were nearly pure gold the core of the collection at the opening of the and weighed close to a ton, representing about $32 Smithsonian, which quickly developed into what is million of current metal value. now affectionately called “the nation’s attic.” There are The U.S. Treasury, for obscure reasons, invested the an astonishing 156 million items in the institution’s Smithson largesse in state bonds issued by Arkansas, current collections—everything from the Enola Illinois, and Michigan. Then Congress began to argue Gay airplane that dropped the first atomic bomb, to and dither, for years, over exactly what Smithson meant Hawaiian feather capes, to the inaugural gowns of by “the increase and diffusion of knowledge among First Ladies, to the original teddy bear named for men.” Meanwhile the states defaulted on their debts, Theodore Roosevelt. and the bonds lost most of their value. The Smithsonian was confined to the Former President John Quincy Adams, castle until its first expansion in 1881. Today it then sitting in the House of Representatives as encompasses no fewer than 19 different museums, a congressman from Massachusetts, and Senator nine research institutions, and the National Zoo. Benjamin Tappan, from Ohio, finally convinced While these are mostly concentrated in the District Congress to make up the lost money, with interest, of Columbia, there are Smithsonian facilities in and use it to fund an institution of science and seven states as well as the Republic of Panama.
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