George Pullman's will cut his twin sons to $3,000 a year for lacking "a sense of responsibility," and his family buried him under steel rails and concrete

George Pullman built a company town for his sleeping-car works south of Chicago. In the 1894 depression he laid off about a third of his workers and cut the rest's wages by an average of 30 percent while keeping rents the same. They struck, and the American Railway Union refused to handle Pullman cars, halting much of the country's rail traffic. A federal commission blamed him, and the Illinois Supreme Court ordered him to sell the town's housing. He died of a heart attack on 19 October 1897, aged 66. His will, filed eight days later, put the estate at $7.6 million. His daughters, Florence Lowden and Harriett Carolan, received $1 million each and the residue. His widow got the house for life and the income of $1,250,000. The will said that "neither of my sons has developed such a sense of responsibility as in my judgment is requisite for the wise use of large properties," and left the twins, George Jr. and Walter Sanger, trusts paying $3,000 a year each. It gave $1.2 million for a free manual training school at Pullman. One executor was Robert T. Lincoln. The family feared former workers would dig up the body. He was buried at Graceland Cemetery in a lead-lined mahogany coffin, under tar paper, asphalt, 18-inch reinforced concrete and a layer of steel rails bolted crosswise. The work took two days. George Jr. died in 1901 and Walter in 1905. A Corinthian column marks the grave.