Do you keep your Christmas or birthday cards? Well, if you don’t maybe we should all keep them, just in case! In 1930 The Hull Daily Mail reported a person with relatives in England and America who had died in the United States intestate with a sizeable amount of money in his estate looking for a home.
Christmas card clue. Yorkshire family and $45,000 estate. Heirs near Driffield.
Whether they are heirs to a handsome fortune, or whether there are so many relatives that the claims are when distributed will be of little monetary value is the uncertain position of the Yorkshire family interested in the estate of Manville S. Hodgson, of Denver Colorado, USA, who died on Christmas Day, 1928, and left $45,000. It is stated that he died intestate, and as far as it is known, near relatives, but a strange number of distant relatives who are living in various parts of England and America.
A Christmas card expressing greetings to the deceased was the instrument by which the Yorkshire family has been identified with the fortune. Mrs. Clara Dixon of Hutton Cranswick, near Driffield, and Mr T. Dixon, of Filey, have been asked for data of their family history as it is believed that the deceased was there are half cousin.
So far I have been unable to find out what became of this “fortune”, but I do find anything out I will let you know – unless of course you know something!
Ian Waugh
Old British News
