No Use for $1,500,000 Fund

1916

Original Bequest Was Made to Aid Needy Immigrants.

ST. LOUIS, Missouri. — This city is trying to find some way in which it can make use of a fund of $1,500,000, which for many years has been growing continually but at present is utterly useless to anybody. It is known as the Mullanphy immigrant relief fund.

Bryan Mullanphy in 1851 bequeathed to the city one-third of his estate for the relief of poor immigrants on their way to homes in the West. The original bequest amounted to $500,000, but it has grown to $1,500,000, most of which is invested in tenement-house property, bringing in an annual income of approximately $38,000. Last year the trustees were able to spend only $2,141 for the stipulated relief.

Sixty years ago, in the days of the prairie schooner, the Mullanphy fund was very welcome and proved a blessing to the stranded immigrants, who were enabled to resume their journeys with new hopes. As the years went by, the stream of immigrants grew smaller. In time the western trails became busy highways, winding thru prosperous farming communities. The covered wagons of the immigrant bound for the West became so scarce that they were a novelty. The need for a fund to aid immigrants finally virtually ceased to exist.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Sept. 16, 1916, p. 5.