NEEDS PROOF OF HER GRAND-
MOTHER'S MARRIAGE.
Claimant to Estate of Adolph Hunte-
mann, Supposed Bachelor, Says
She Is Granddaughter.
If Minnie A. Shepherd of Burlington, Ind., is unable to give proofs of her parentage, the recognized heirs of the late Adolph Huntemann will get the $200,000 estate which was to have been divided among them on May 15, last, but which was tied up the day before by six suits brought in the Nevada, Mo., courts by Mrs. Shepherd, the wife of a farmer.
Yesterday a bundle of papers arrived here from Burlington, being a transcript of a deposition Mrs. Shepherd made last week in her case against the Huntemann heirs. According to her, she is the only direct heir of Kansas City's supposed old bachelor, as she claims to be his granddaughter.
In her deposition, Mrs. Shepherd says that she is the daughter of Mrs. Mary Stubans, who in turn was the daughter of Adolph Huntemann and a woman whose name Mrs. Shepherd does not remember. "Aunt Kate" King, who once lived in St. Louis, would know, she says, but Mrs. Shepherd does not know where "Aunt Kate" lives. She is advertising for her now in St. Louis and Chicago newspapers, in the hope of learning the name of the grandmother, and something about the wedding.
Answering questions put by Grant Rosenzweig, attorney for the public administrator, the woman claiming to be the granddaughter of Huntemann says she does not know where her grandmother was married to Huntemann. Mrs. Shepherd admits her mother was born out of wedlock, but says that after the arrival of the baby there was a marriage, and in that way the baby, Mrs. Shepherd's mother, Mary Stubans, became the legal child of Huntemann.
When asked by Attorney Rosenzweig, if when she read in the newspapers that Huntemann had died leaving an estate of $400,000 she had not been prompted to file a claim against the estate. Mrs. Shepherd answered that her first report was the estate was only $4,000, and she did not believe it. When later she learned it was $400,000, it has shrunk to $200,000 now according to the attorney for the administrator, she at once set about finding the records regarding herself.
She found that her mother had been Mary Stubaus nursed by a Mrs. Alexander and "Aunt Kate" King at her birth.
Adolph Huntemann died in March, 1907, supposedly a single man, leaving much valuable business property and some farm property. Attorneys employed in the case could find no heirs closer than cousins in Germany until the very day before the dividing of the estate, when the Indiana woman appeared of record in the substantial way of six civil suits to stop the distribution.
