Episcopal Press and News
25th Anniversary of Death of Benefactor Observed
Episcopal News Service. February 18, 1976 [76058]
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- When Sylvia Green Wilks died in New York City on Feb. 5, 1951, the terms of her will probated 11 months later made her the most generous benefactor to Episcopal Church causes in the history of the Church. The tall, austere recluse, virtually unknown except as the mysterious daughter of Hetty Green (1834-1916), spent the last of her 80 years in an apartment at 988 Fifth Avenue.
The 25th anniversary of her death was recognized at the noon Eucharist at the Episcopal Church Center, New York City, on February 5, when prayers were said.
The unusual will left approximately $25 million to parishes and institutions related to the Episcopal Church. After providing several millions for friends, distant relatives, and former employees, the residue of the estate was divided into 140 "shares" which in the final accounting of the Chase Bank were worth $642,155.93 each. The gross estate after taxes came to about $100 million, almost the same as the amount left to her and her brother 35 years earlier. During her lifetime she made no effort to enlarge the estate, sometimes keeping as much as $40 million in a checking account where it drew no interest. The personal philanthropies of her lifetime have never been tabulated and probably now the information is not recoverable because of the secrecy and anonymity with which she contributed to various causes.
It was on the 31st of January, 1952, that the Chase Bank dropped checks in the U.S. mail to the long list of recipients. For almost all, the windfall was totally unexpected. A majority had never seen Mrs. Wilks. In some cases the news reporters, to whom the bank had released the details on the same day, arrived at the parish, or hospital, or home of the individual before the check.
Receiving one share of approximately $650,000 were two New York churches, St. Bartholomew's and St. George's. Others with one share each were Christ Church, Greenwich, Conn.; Immanuel, Bellows Falls, Vt.; St. Anne's, Brooklyn; Trinity, Newport, R.I.; and Seaman's Church Institute, New York.
Two shares were received by St. James, Hyde Park, the parish of Franklin D. Roosevelt; St. Peter's, Morristown, N.J.; Incarnation, Trinity, and General Seminary, New York; and St. Luke's Hospital, New Bedford, Mass. There were no recipients of three shares.
The largest beneficiaries, with four shares each, included five Episcopal institutions -- St. Luke's Home for Aged Women and St. Luke's Hospital, New York; Kent and Groton Schools in Connecticut; and St. Paul's School, Concord, N.H. These five bequests were worth slightly more than $2.5 million each.
The will as originally drawn provided that the entire estate should be divided among Columbia, Yale, M.I.T., and Princeton. The donor dropped Princeton and added Harvard, providing finally four shares each for Columbia, Harvard and M.I.T. and two for Yale. Fordham University, a Roman Catholic institution, also received two shares. Beekman Downtown Hospital, New York, received four shares and the hospital in Bellows Falls two. Mrs. Wilks' intention to improve the New Bedford Public Library was thwarted when the city fathers, on receipt of the bequest, simply cut off public support, leaving the library in about the same situation as before the gift.
The origin of the Wilks fortune went back to the shipping days in New England when her forebears, the Howland and Robinson families, sent whalers into the Atlantic and merchant ships to China. The relatively modest inheritances received by Hetty Green from her aunt and her father -- about $6 million -- were pyramided by her shrewd investments in stocks, bonds, real estate, and mortgages into the fortune which gained her notoriety as the richest woman in the world.
Henrietta Green's son, the older and only brother of Sylvia Wilks, was very able, flamboyant, personable, and generous. Though unmarried, he rarely managed to live within his enormous income. At his death four states sued for the inheritance tax which Massachusetts finally won over Florida, New York, and Texas.
Sylvia Wilks' interest in the Episcopal Church, shared neither by her mother nor her brother, dated from the private education she received in the parish school of Immanuel Church, Bellows Falls. She probably attended at least once every parish she enriched but most of the rectors who shared her final largesse admitted they would not have recognized her.
The most generous testator in Episcopal Church history was a lonely woman who probably needed more of her Church's ministry than she received.