Hay - wants dead girls estate
Source: Monday, 12 September 1892
Nearly everybody in town remembers Harry Phelps Hay who attended Wabash College last year and who took such an active part in religious work. He is a dapper young man with dark complexion and raven locks, always neatly attired in a black Prince Albert suit and distinguished by a pair of nose glasses. He boarded with Dr. Duncan last year and in the college was noted for the Y.M.C.A. work which he did and his prominence in the work of the Epworth League of the Methodist Church. H. Phelps Hay has distinguished himself as the following extract from the Chicago Tribune bears witness. The novel spectacle of a once prospective father-in-law and his daughter’s lover fighting for the possession of the estate of the young woman, who is now dead, is presented in a Circuit Court bill filed yesterday. H. Phelps Hay is the bereaved lover who had appealed to the courts. The defendant is George C. Phelps, of Englewood. Miss Inez Phelps, his daughter and the complainant’s sweetheart, was the young lady whose estate is in controversy. She was 32 years old when she died last June. Her lover 23. Books and keepsakes worth $500 and real estate valued at $1,000 form the property in contest.
Hay, the complainant, was brought here from the East four years ago and given a home in the Phelps’ household while he was completing a course at the Englewood Normal School. During all the time he is said to have maintained a correspondence with another young woman whose acquaintance he formed in his eastern home.
The bill itself is a novelty. In story book language, the complainant shows that:
In the year 1887 he began correspondence by letter with Inez Phelps, then residing in Englewood, an only daughter of George C. Phelps; that he and Miss Phelps were related as cousins-german, and being so related, there easily sprung up a friendly acquaintance that soon grew into a correspondence that evoked the deepest and most sincere expressions of love of the one toward the other. So that from between the year 1887 and 1892, they became more and more endeared to each other, and by mutual consent and desire this endearment as, Jan. 4, 1892, further evidenced by a former betrothal of the one to the other. The consideration therefore was their mutual love to and for each other, and giving and holding in deepest devotion and sanctity the one to the other throughout their natural lives, which consideration was part of their existence for and on behalf of each other prior to Jan. 4, 1892.
But the contract was not made public. Explaining this silence, the bill says the secret was kept because of the sacredness of the obligations the complainant considered himself under by reason of his entering into the contract. Nevertheless his affianced confided to certain of her most esteemed friends outside the family relatives the fact that she and the complainant were about to be betrothed. Continuing the bill describes the singular “engagement” as follows:
At the time of the betrothal Miss Phelps received from your orator a plain gold ring as an earnest of a pledge that he would for the considerations on her part fulfill to her his promises made and entered into under the betrothal, and she accepted the same in confirmation of her obligations under the mutual contract.
For a further consideration and in conformance of the contract the complainant and his affianced pro forma, and in the name and for and on behalf of all the real and personal property, therefore, owned, and then in possession of these contracting parties, interchanged with each other a book, and stated at the same time that what was the complainant’s should thenceforth be the property of his espoused, but to be used in common, inter se, and at the same time and place she stated that what was hers should thenceforth be the property of and belong to the complainant, only the same should be used in common during their lives, the title thereto to be absolute in the survivor.
Miss Phelps died June 24 intestate and leaving George C. Phelps, her father, and the complainant heirs at law. Hay avers that the intentions of the deceased as expressed in many letters to him, make him the sole owner of the estate. He declares his belief that Mr. Phelps is about to sell the personal property. An injunction restraining such action is asked, and a decree conferring the title to him. Attached to the bill is a series of letters intended to show the intended commonality. One of them is as follows:
Thursday Morning, December 7.—This is for good-bye until I see you again, darling. It is a busy, busy girlie that is yours; busy and glad in the Christmas doings. It is all of little things--Many that my hands have touched in the making—but, my dear, has been warm with love in the doing. I had a Christmas present yesterday. I’m anxious to show it to you. I think it will be larger when I share it with you, precious, for all mine is thine, and I love you.***I am to see you—new thoughts will come—the life in love must be larger thereby. O, Father, strengthen the love, I’m all yours. Publication of the bill brought Mr. Phelps, the defendant, to the court house yesterday afternoon. He read the petition and declared the story absurd. “It’s all nonsense,” said he. “I took the boy to my house because he had no advantage in the East. He attended the Normal School, taught for awhile, and last year went to school at Crawfordsville, Ind. He was corresponding with a girl in the East all the time, and it’s a shame - typed by s