Estate · 1888

No Will Found

When Amos Jerome Snell was shot dead in his own mansion on February 9, 1888, he left behind a fortune — and not a single word about what should happen to it.

Amos Snell had spent fifty years building one of the most substantial private fortunes in Chicago. At the time of his death, his estate was estimated at over $2 million — a sum equivalent to tens of millions today — comprising more than 400 properties scattered across Chicago and Cook County, along with toll road franchises, business interests, and personal assets accumulated over decades of relentless enterprise.

No valid will was ever found. Whether Snell had simply never gotten around to drafting one, whether a will existed and was suppressed, or whether he believed he had more time — no one knows. What is certain is that his death without a will set in motion a legal catastrophe that would consume his family and his fortune for the next fifty-five years.

Under Illinois intestate succession law, his widow Henrietta received her statutory share. The remainder was divided among the surviving children: Albert, Grace, Mary, and Alice. But the division was anything but peaceful. Each heir had competing claims, competing lawyers, and competing ideas about what they were owed. The estate entered Cook County probate court and essentially never left — not for decades.

The absence of a will also meant that the most valuable asset in the estate — the toll road franchise on the Northwestern Plank Road — became immediately contested. The heirs assumed it would pass to them like any other property. The courts would eventually say otherwise.

"A man who built 400 properties left no instructions for a single one of them."

The irony was not lost on observers at the time. A man who had spent his life in meticulous real estate transactions — who had negotiated toll franchises with the state of Illinois, fought legal battles over road rights, and managed a sprawling property empire — had made no provision for what would happen when he was gone. His murder, sudden and violent, left his family without a roadmap. The courts became the only authority left to sort it out.