In re Estate of Dolbeer

This is an application by Horatio Sehander, an uncle and one of the next of kin and heirs at law of decedent, to revoke the probate of an instrument filed in this court on July 18, 1904, purporting to be the last will of Bertha M. Dolbeer, executed on April 23, 1904, and admitted to probate on the 22d of December, 1904.

*251 The issues tendered by the grounds of contest are (1) the incompetency of the decedent to make a last will and testament; and (2) that the decedent was unduly influenced by Etta Marion Warren, the principal beneficiary, to execute the alleged will.

The contest came on for trial on the 29th of August, 1906, and the contestant introduced to support his theory of the case several witnesses, among them the main beneficiary, Miss Warren, Miss Ethyl Hager, Mrs. May Moody Watson, Raymond Hoff Sherman, Mrs. Margaret H. Warren, Miss Frances Stewart, Mrs. Elizabeth C. Phillips, Mrs. Margaret Nelson Bresse, Mrs. Angela Brunson, Mrs. Hilma Carson, George H. Tyson, John Cotter Pelton, Thomas Saywell, William Gordon Mugan; and, under stipulation, the testimony of certain witnesses in New York taken by deposition and ruled out in the former contest of Adolph Schander,…