Benjamin Franklin left Boston and Philadelphia £1,000 each for 200 years, and his heirs, a school and the state fought over it

A codicil dated 23 June 1789 left £1,000 to the inhabitants of Boston and £1,000 to Philadelphia. The money was to be lent at 5 percent to young married artificers under 25 to set up in business. Franklin calculated that Boston's fund would reach £131,000 in 100 years. £100,000 would go to public works, and the rest would grow for another century to £4,061,000, with £1,061,000 for the town and £3 million for the state. Boston accepted on 1 June 1790. The first loan was made in May 1791 and the last about 1886, when apprentices had almost disappeared. In 1891 Franklin's heirs sued and held up the 100-year division. The suit failed. In 1893 the managers laid out $322,490.20, which built the Franklin Union, a technical school, opened in 1908. A 1958 statute tried to hand the whole fund to the school early. The court refused in 1960. The trust expired on 30 June 1991 with $4,646,613.48. The school argued the 1958 statute now gave it everything. On 6 December 1993 the Supreme Judicial Court ruled that it did not, and that the money went as Franklin wrote. Philadelphia's fund held about $2 million in 1990. A plan to spend it on festivals and a concert featuring Aretha Franklin drew objections; it went to scholarships for trades and to the Franklin Institute.