FORTUNATE LITTLE GIRL.

Putaruru Press, Volume IV, Issue 128, 15 April 1926, Page 3

FORTUNATE LITTLE GIRL.

RECEIVES A HUGE GIFT. A fortune of £BOO,OOO has fallen to a 14-year-old orphan girl, Jean Ferris, who is at a Bournemouth school. It is stated, from San Francisco that the legacy comes on the termination of a trust fund left by the girl’s grandfather, the late Claus Spreekels, the sugar king. This romantic inheritance is only one chapter of a real life story which ' contains romance enough for a dozen novels. The founder of the fortune, Claus Spreekels, was a poor German youth who emigrated to America without a penny. He had, however, great business ability and inexhaustible resourcefulness and energy, and within a short time he was the owner of a flourishing grocery business. Later, he concentrated on sugar, and, after an intensive study of the European and American refinery processes, he built j factories in the United States which became world famous. His only daughter, Emma Claudine, fell in love with Mr Tom Watson, a San Francisco broker. The sugar king was opposed to the match, as he wanted his daughter to marry a man who was a candidate for the Senate and also attorney for the Spreekels interests. So hurt was Miss Spreekels by her father's failure to support her choice that shortly after her marriage to Mr Watson She returned* her dowry to the sugar king, which is reputed to have amounted to over £250,000. Apparently she regretted, this impulsive renunciation, for later she enlisted the aid of the law to recover the dowry, on the ground that a wife could not assign ■her property without the express sanction of her husband. In 1906 Mrs Watson was a widow residing at Kingswood, near Reigate, Surrey, when she married Mr John W. Ferris, and the lucky Jean is the child, of that marriage. After Mr Ferris’ death Mrs Ferris married his olu friend, Mr A. Hutton, a wealthy gentleman, who resides at Nutfield Priory, and is thus little Jean’s stepfather. Mrs Hutton dßed twelve months ago, but she had (■Continued in Next Column.) J

become reconciled to her father, and he left the £BOO.OOO in trust for his granddaughter. The fortune includes some of the finest business property in San Francisco.