Myra Clark Gaines sued for 51 years over her father's lost will and the New Orleans land sold from his estate, and her heirs collected after she died

Daniel Clark, a New Orleans merchant, was the first congressman from the Territory of Orleans. He had a daughter, Myra, with Zulime Carrière, who was married to another man when their affair began. Myra was raised by Colonel Samuel Davis and his wife. Clark's will of 1811 left his estate to his mother, with Richard Relf and Beverly Chew as executors. Friends said a handwritten will of July 1813 named Myra as his child and heir. Clark died on 16 August 1813. The second will was never found; friends told Myra that Chew and Relf destroyed it. She learned her parentage around 1830 and married William Wallace Whitney in 1832. In 1834 they sued to void the 1811 will. Chew and Relf sued Whitney for libel, and he spent three weeks in the Orleans Parish Prison; he died of yellow fever in 1837. Much of Clark's land had been sold, largely to the City of New Orleans, so she sued the city and the buyers. Her cases went to the US Supreme Court 17 times. In 1856 the Louisiana Supreme Court upheld the 1813 will. In 1861 the US Supreme Court declared her Clark's legitimate heir and called the case "the most remarkable in the records of its courts." She married General E. P. Gaines. She died in New Orleans on 9 January 1885, before the final judgment against the city. After debts and legal costs her heirs received just over $60,000. She lies in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1.