The Governor Candidate and the Orphans' Trust
A Democratic nominee for governor was accused of holding back a dead father's trust fund while spending money on coal land and election expenses.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Under the headline “H. J. Snively Smoked Out,” the Post-Intelligencer pressed its case against Henry J. Snively, the Democratic candidate for governor. The paper charged that Snively, while guardian of the Fallon heirs in West Virginia, had failed to account for a trust fund paid to him by the Catholic Knights of America for the support and education of four fatherless children. A West Virginia court, it said, had ordered him in 1886 to pay the money into court with interest and costs, and he had not done so. Instead, the article alleged, he had invested a large sum in coal lands in Washington and had used cash for election expenses rather than paying the orphans. It quoted John T. McGraw and Mrs. E. Fallon, the children's mother, and said Snively's own affidavits admitted enough to condemn him. “He should not and will not be elected governor of this state,” the paper concluded.
“He has admitted that he left West Virginia without settling his accounts as guardian of the Fallon orphans.”
Opposition research and trust-fund scandals are not new: a legal dispute in another state became a Washington campaign issue almost overnight. The story also shows how papers used allegations about private money to argue that a candidate was unfit for public office.
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