Senator James Fair locked his fortune in a trust, a school principal produced a pencil will and a marriage contract, and his children turned on her

James G. Fair was a former US senator from Nevada and an owner of the Comstock Lode. His wife Theresa divorced him in 1883 for habitual adultery. He died in San Francisco on 28 December 1894 with a fortune put at $45 million. His will left it in trust under four advisers, paying his three children, Charles, Theresa and Virginia, an allowance. Nettie Craven, principal of the Mission Grammar School, then produced a later will written in pencil in Fair's hand. It dropped the trust, so the fortune would go to the children outright. The children declared it genuine; the four trustees called it a forgery. Months later Craven produced two deeds giving her valuable San Francisco property. On 26 June 1896 she took the stand under the name Mrs. Nettie R. Craven Fair and produced a marriage contract with no witnesses and no officiant, signed by her and Fair. The children reversed themselves and hired the handwriting experts Daniel T. Ames and David N. Carvalho and the photographer Theodore Kytka to prove the pencil will forged. In September 1897 the jury in the Craven deed case stood 8 to 4 for Craven and was discharged; Judge Slack then ruled for Fair's heirs. Craven lost her claims, moved to Iowa and died in a mental institution^†. Charles Fair died in a car crash in France on 14 August 1902.