Education: Mr. Ackland’s Wills

One day back in 1936, an eccentric old millionaire popped up on the palm-fringed campus of Rollins College at Winter Park, Fla. and began looking for a place to build an art museum. Even in those days, Spanish-styled Rollins College was something to behold. Under the unconventional presidency of Hamilton Holt, it was already running heavily to tennis and horseback riding, had abolished professorial lectures and final examinations, put little stress on student grades, went in for such campus curiosities as a tree-lined “Walk of Fame,” paved with stones from the homes and haunts of the world’s great. Millionaire William Hayes Ackland, an amateur art fancier, was one of many pleased by such departures from tradition, especially since Rollins also showed a lively interest in art.

In his will, Bachelor Ackland had left over a million dollars, the bulk of his fortune, to Duke University for an art museum. If Duke refused it, the money was to go to the University of North Carolina. In third place was Rollins; but after his visit to Rollins, William Ackland was thinking of moving it up to first.

Then Ackland was invited to Duke, had such a pleasant time that he knocked North Carolina and Rollins out of his will entirely. He bequeathed to Duke not only the art museum, but also his mortal remains to be buried in the museum apse. With these affairs settled, in 1940 he died.

But after his death, Duke decided it did not want William Ackland’s legacy because it had “too many strings attached.” Duke already has the bodies of three benefactors—all tobacco-rich Dukes—buried in its Memorial Chapel.

Ackland’s nieces & nephews rushed to court to seek the fortune they had given up as lost. The University of North Carolina (with the late Ambassador to Britain O. Max Gardner as lawyer) and Rollins (with ex-U.S. Attorney General Homer S. Cummings) followed. First to lose out, after five years’ litigation, were the nieces & nephews. That left the two colleges to fight it out between themselves.

Last week a District of Columbia Court ruled that in his last days Ackland had been definitely partial to Rollins and that Rollins, therefore, should get the money. Unless the decision is reversed on appeal, Rollins will have its museum, and Ackland’s bones a place to rest.