MARK TWAIN ESTATE ABOUT HALF MILLION
Largely in Stocks and Estimated Worth of the Mark Twain Company
PROPERTY IN TWO STATES
Principally In This City and at His Home in Redding, Conn. - Manuscripts Said
to be Without Value.
Deputy State Controller Julius Harburger filed with the Surrogates' Court yesterday the tax appraisal of the estate of Samuel L. Clemens, (Mark Twain.) Mr. Clemens died at his home in Connecticut on April 21, 1910. He left in this State and Connecticut an estate aggregating $471,136.
By the terms of the will, which was made on Aug. 7, 1909, the author leaves his entire estate to his sole surviving daughter, Mrs. Clara Clemens Gabrilowitsch. The witnesses to he will were Albert Bigelow Paine, Harry A. Lounsbury of Redding, Conn., and Charles T. Lark of 571 West 139th Street, this city. The executors of the will were Zoheth S. Freeman and Edward E. Loomis, both of New York, and Jervis Langdon of Elmira.
Mr. Clemens left no real estate in this State, but his personal property here amounted to $296,746. He held among his personal effects 929 shares of stock of five different companies at different times, which turned out to be worthless, as in most cases the companies were out of business.
Included in the estate in Connecticut were 1,750 shares of the Utah Consolidated Mining Company, valued at $80,377; 165 shares of United Fruit Company, valued at $29,370; 400 shares of Anaconda Copper Company, valued at $18,100; and 100 shares of Union Pacific Railroad Company, valued at $18,587.
His property at Redding, Conn., is valued at $70,000. A trunk containing manuscripts was said to be without value. Some of his important holdings in this State were fifty shares of the Mark Twain Company, valued at $200,000 and 100 shares of American Telephone and Telegraph Company, valued at $13,687, and 813 shares of J. Langdon & Co., valued at $21,674.
The author also left books valued at $2,000. An affidavit by Charles Lark, the witness, states that the appraisal value of $200,000 for the shares in the Mark Twain Company was considered too high by Harper & Brothers, who published Mr. Clemens's books, and who placed an upset value of $180,000 on the stock. In commenting upon the appraisal there is also a letter from F. A. Duneka of Harper & Brothers, which says:
"A copyright is a very perishable and usually non-marketable thing, growing of less and less value very rapidly after an author's death.
"While we expect that during the next four years the Mark Twain estate will receive under existing contracts $18,000 a year upon copyright royalty account, yet this amount after the expiration of existing contracts will immediately tend to dwindle and diminish.
"We put an upset valuation of $180,000 upon his copyrights, and even this we regard as excessive.
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