Скачать или смотреть The Adopted Heiress Who Discovered Her REAL Family Was Worth $35 Million: Myra Clark Gaines

Myra Clark Gaines discovered at age 26 her real father was Daniel Clark who owned one-third of New Orleans real estate worth $35 million, triggering America's longest civil lawsuit from 1834-1885. This episode covers her 57-year inheritance battle through two husbands, thirty attorneys, $850,000 in legal fees, Supreme Court victories, and her 1885 death before receiving the fortune—her estate collecting only $923,788 in 1891.

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TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Introduction
1:50 Chapter One: The Secret Daughter of New Orleans
5:16 Chapter Two: The Vanished Will
8:46 Chapter Three: The Great Gaines Case
12:47 Chapter Four: The Heiress Who Proved She Was Right

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Myra was born in 1804 as the secret daughter of Daniel Clark—Irish immigrant who owned roughly one-third of New Orleans real estate and served as first delegate from the Territory of Orleans to Congress.

Her mother Zulime Carrière maintained a clandestine relationship with Clark that never became legal marriage, with their illegitimate daughter placed with Colonel Samuel Davis and his wife to protect Clark's reputation.

Daniel Clark died suddenly in 1813 at age fifty-one, with only an 1811 will presented at probate leaving property to his mother Mary Clark and making no mention of any child.

According to later testimony, Clark had drawn up a new 1813 testament explicitly acknowledging "Myra Clark" as his "legitimate and only daughter" naming her universal legatee—but this will vanished, with executors Richard Relf and Beverly Chew proceeding as if it never existed.

Around 1830 Myra discovered letters suggesting she wasn't Samuel Davis's daughter, prompting Davis to confess her true parentage and that Clark had intended his estate to secure her future.

In 1834 her husband William W. Whitney filed suit alleging Relf and Chew had suppressed or destroyed the 1813 will, but courts rejected the attempt and the executors sued Whitney for libel, leaving him briefly jailed before his 1837 death.

She married General Edmund Pendleton Gaines in 1839, cycled through thirty attorneys, and paid roughly $850,000 in legal fees over fifty-one years while the aggregate value of properties she claimed exceeded $35 million.

In Gaines v. Hennen in 1867 the Supreme Court described Myra as Clark's "legitimate and only daughter" and universal legatee—but recognition didn't sweep aside hundreds of transactions that had occurred while the 1811 will was treated as valid.

Myra Clark Gaines died in 1885 at age eighty-one having spent fifty-one years in continuous litigation without ever holding the fortune she had proven was legally hers.

Six years after her death in 1891, the Supreme Court ordered New Orleans to pay her estate $923,788 plus interest—only a sliver of the $35 million she had once claimed.