The Will Case

The McGraw-Fiske Will case is the most infamous controversy in Cornell University’s history. The first two presidents of Cornell, the first university librarian, and several members of the board of trustees all found themselves embroiled in the case. The story itself was quite sensational; it involved a dying heiress, an impecunious professor, a hasty wedding, a mansion, and a campus in need of a library building.

Cornell benefactor John McGraw died in 1877, leaving his considerable fortune to his daughter Jennie. When Willard Fiske married her in Berlin three years later, he was by all accounts a professor in debt. Jennie McGraw Fiske died in September 1881, only 14 months after their marriage. Her entire estate was valued at the time at $2,202,593, $300,000 of which had been set aside for Fiske. Because New York State law prevented primary heirs from losing more than half of their estate, Fiske decided to contest the will, much to Cornell’s loss. The case dragged on for seven years, and was settled by the U. S. Supreme Court in Fiske’s favor on the grounds that Cornell University could not legally accept the value of the bequest. The legal wrangling proved to be tremendously divisive to the Cornell community, producing friction and distrust between former friends and colleagues, principally between Fiske, Douglass Boardman (executor of the estate) and Henry W. Sage, a former business partner of John McGraw and an important university benefactor. Distancing himself from the controversy surrounding the settlement of the estate, Fiske left Ithaca permanently in July 1883, and returned only once before his death.

Ironically, Cornell actually gained from the McGraw-Fiske will case. Henry Sage endowed the university with $600,000 to construct the new library building that he had hoped the McGraw legacy would have funded. Fiske willed to the Cornell University Library the proceeds from the sale of his villa in Italy, his considerable literary collections, and the remainder of Jennie’s legacy, upon his death on September 16, 1904.

Continue the tour