Willoughhy N. Smith, Robert O. Keene, John Henry Keene, Jr., and Archibald Stirling, Jr., for complainants.
J. T. Mason, R., S. T. Wallis, for defendants.
Morris, D. J. This is a bill in equity filed by certain aliens residing in Ireland, claiming to be the next of kin of Edward Sullivan, deceased, late of the city of St. Louis, in the state of Missouri, and entitled to his personal estate, charging that the sums of money obtained by certain of the defendants in a distribution of his personal estate heretofore made by the probate court for the city of St. Louis were obtained by fraud practiced upon that court, and praying for a decree setting aside that distribution and compelling the defendants to bring into this court the money received by them, to the end that the complainants may receive what they claim belongs to them.
It appears that in 1866 Edward Sullivan died in St. Louis, unmarried and intestate. He was found dead in his room, and the coroner was about to have his body interred at the public expense, when it was discovered, through John Maquire, an agent who had been employed by him in the management of his property, that he was a person of considerable fortune. Maguire was subsequently appointed, by the probate court of St. Louis, his administrator, settled his debts and funeral expenses, and distributed the residue of his personal estate under orders of that court.
To procure that distribution, a certain Henry Murta, (now dead,) then residing in the state of Pennsylvania, filed in said probate court his affidavit, dated January 30, 1869, in which he swore that he was a second cousin of the deceased; that the intestate had come to this country from Ireland, and never had a brother, and had had but one sister, who had died in Ireland, at the age of 45 years, unmarried; that the father, mother, grandfather and grandmother, uncles and aunts of the intestate had long been deed; that the only one of his uncles or aunts who had left descendants was an uncle named Matthew Andoe; that the only child of this Matthew Andoe living at the death of the intestate was a certain Rosanna Andoe, a lunatic, then about 65 years of
