Trustees of the Western Maryland College v. McKinstry

McSherry, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. Mary M. McKinstry died on the twenty-eighth of December, eighteen hundred and ninety, and on the thirteenth of January following letters of administration upon her estate were committed to her brother, Mordecai C. McKinstry. On the twenty-fifth of the succeeding March the administrator brought into and filed in the Orphans’ Court of Carroll County a Bible which had belonged to the decedent; and upon the last leaf in the back thereof there was written, in the hand-writing of the deceased, the following; “ $5,000 for West. Md. College; $1,000 of it to be given to the Theological Semiuary, $1,000 to Ward Hall.

The $3,000 to be given to the main college. July 18, 1883. Mamie McKinstry.” Subsequently the Trustees of Western Maryland College, ¹⁹⁰ a body corporate, filed a petition in the Orphans’ Oourt offering the above recited writing for probate as a testamentary paper; but Mordeoai O. McKinstry, in his capacity as administrator, filed a caveat against the probate thereof. Some evidence was taken, and an agreed statement of facts was drawn up and signed, and finally, after a hearing, the Orphans’ Oourt refused to admit the paper to probate.

From this order the present appeal was taken hy the Trustees of Western Maryland Oollege. The only question which we are called upon to decide is whether the paper is entitled to be admitted to probate as a valid will of personal property. When the case was argued before us we were all of opinion that the paper was entitled to be admitted to probate; and we were of that opinion because prior to the adoption of the Act of 1884, ch. 293, no more formality was required in the execution of a will disposing of personal property than Miss McKinstry observed in this instance, and we were under the impression that the second section of that statute, expressly saving from the operation of the' Act itself all wills bequeathing only personal estate, and executed prior to the first day of August,'