Frances Louise Butler and the stash of Jewels she left behind at the Portage Hotel in Akron, Ohio

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Frances Louise Butler. 1866 ~ 1949.

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I couldn't find very much on Miss. Butler. But, this is what I did find.

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Blog Created: 3-25-2024

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Bio by: Bill Parker ~

In Akron, an 80-year-old recluse named Frances Louise Butler died, leaving in her hotel room a hoard of $300,000 in Government bonds wrapped up in old newspapers, and a "small fortune" (approx. $350,000) in diamonds, rubies and pearls in a sugar sack. A man who came to the funeral remembered only one thing about her: she had sung "Oh Promise Me" at the bier of assassinated President McKinley in 1901. For more information, refer to TIME Magazine - Monday, Feb. 07, 1949.

Francis was the child of Nelson S Butler and Elizabeth A Wade. She attended Smith College, School of Music, Northampton, Massachusetts from 1885-1886.

For 30 years prior to her death, she lived in the Portage Hotel (which she owned) in the city of Akron, Summit Co, Ohio. She was an eccentric spinster who died in 1949 having left a will written in 1906 which named her mother, who died in 1921, as her sole heir. This led to a lengthy court battle over her estate. According to newspaper articles of the time she was a 'singer/real estate operator'. Newspaper articles also refer to solving the puzzle of who inherits her estate by genealogical charts and records and that 'she was a descendant of Revolutionary Day Tories'; that her 'paternal grandparents were Alexander Butler and Lydia Tarbell'; and that her 'maternal grandparents were Aaron Wade and Polly Brown.