Estate of Merryfield

Emily M. Merryfield, a widow, died in 1913, leaving surviving her five sons and two daughters. Por several years before her death she had been so blind that she could not recognize objects and could only distinguish between light and dark. She was sixty-eight years of age. On the day before her death her daughter Gertrude E. Pox found three sheets of paper folded together and placed in a locked drawer. In this drawer were other papers. Each of these three sheets contained writing entirely in the hand of the deceased. The three sheets were of the same size and character of paper and apparently were torn from the same writing pad. The first of these sheets contained the following:

These three sheets of paper were offered for probate as being the last will and testament of the deceased. Certain of the sons instituted a contest to the admission in probate of the three sheets, contending that the writing upon the third sheet alone constituted the will of the deceased. There was to the trial court presented no other ground of contest. That court after a hearing determined that the contents of the three sheets constituted one instrument, which was the last will and testament of the…