Millionaire

Reporters on a daily drudge through the Surrogate's Court in Poughkeepsie leaped hungrily last week upon a rare scrap of news. A millionaire's name over a drab set of tax-appraisal figures made their story. The name: Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

The common man's President had died uncommonly wealthy. His executors assessed his gross estate, before expenses and taxes, at $1,940,999. Nearly half that amount he had inherited in stocks and bonds from his mother; another half-million was soundly liquid in bank accounts, additional securities and U.S. Treasury bonds. Hyde Park property (including $110,520 worth donated to the nation) and the famous stamp collection (auctioned for $212,847) were other principal assets.

With meticulous care the list recorded F.D.R.'s modest possession of $133 in cash on the day of his death. Last year's royalties on The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, published by Random House in 1938, amounted to a mere $13.50. Alumnus Roosevelt's $500 investment in the Harvard Club of New York had dwindled in value to $350. Typical debts: $22 for Hyde Park seed, $72 to a British stamp dealer, and $8.88 for newspapers.

In the final accounting, attorneys' fees, executors' commissions, administrative charges and funeral expenses would subtract a $200,000 chunk from the estate. Estate taxes would take out considerably more. But the remaining fortune made F.D.R. the second richest U.S. President.*

* George Washington left a fortune estimated at over $5 million, Lincoln only $110,000. Ulysses S. Grant struggled out of bankruptcy only by selling his memoirs, finished but a few days before his death. Roosevelt I's $810,706 estate formerly ranked second to Washington's.

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