The Atlanta Constitution (Georgia)
19 July 1897, Page 5
MARVIN'S LOST SON GETS A SHARENext up: The Doctor Becomes a Criminal and Marvin Comes to Atlanta.
Unexpected Heir To Dead Doctor's Estate Appears on the Scene.
HE CAME OUT OF THE WEST
Set Up His Right to a Part in Dr. Marvin's Estate.
WENT TO LAW AND GOT JUDGEMENT
Compromise Has Been Reached and the Matter Will Go Out of the Courts. It Is a Thrilling Story of Both Romance and Tragedy.
Many years ago a handsome young man, with flashing black eyes and chestnut hair, worked industriously in a harness shop in a small, unfrequented street in a bustling city of Illinois. A few months ago he died in Cordele, Ga., the president of a bank.
This man, who stepped from poverty and labor to wealth and ease, was George W. Marvin, well known in Atlanta on account of his reckless daring and his brilliant schemes. Marvin was not an ordinary man. He was shrewd, scheming, daring, reckless and invincible. He had a multiplicity of wives, he served in the penitentiary, yet he moved in good society. He committed and was convicted of crime, yet he outlived his shame for many seasons and finally died, holding an important position in the commercial world, which it is said, he secured without earning one dollar from honest toil after he left the humble harness shop where he worked as a youth.
Even death did not wholly annihilate Marvin, for his young wife had his body embalmed, and for many weeks the body, cold in the rigor of death, remained in the casket, which stood on end in the parlor of his magnificent home. Daily the casket was visited by the young widow and the body was caressed and embraced at frequent intervals.
But the casket and the body have been removed from the parlor. In fact, the remains were brought through Atlanta, it is said, on the same train upon which the widow and her newly found husband passed through on their wedding trip. Mrs. Marvin, who was wife number four, married Joseph E. Bivins, of Cordele, who was the private secretary of the bank to which her late husband had been president. Mrs. Bivins soon died, and her estate, which had been inherited from Marvin, was left to Bivins.
Not many weeks ago a young man came from Kansas to Cordele, and he filed claim to one-half of the vast estate. He said he was the son of Marvin and was entitled to his portion of the property. The claim was stubbornly fought in the courts and a few days ago a compromise was effected between the young heir and Joseph Bivins, the aged widower.
It is the story of this suit and the compromise which has resurrected the history of Marvin and brought to light his checkered career.
Marvin's Early History.
Dating back more than thirty years ago Marvin was found at work in his harness shop.
When yet a young man, he married Miss Lucinda Tyler, a lady of excellent family, but without any means. Marvin ceased his labors at the harness bench and he blossomed forth as a specialist, but it is claimed he had never studied medicine, and began business without any knowledge of the diseases which he claimed he could cure.
The quack physician did not prosper, and he was compelled to do other things than were in the line of his profession. He is said to have been interested in a variety show and that later on his young wife secured a divorce upon the grounds that he wished her to sign a contract for an immoral purpose.
Marvin then drifted through the west after the separation. He traveled about under assumed names, it is said, without any special object in view, doing but little toward earning a livelihood, becoming shiftless and indolent, finally drifting into Springfield, Ill., where he became infatuated with a beautiful woman of that town. This woman was Miss Annie M. Blakely, and a marriage followed.
In less than a year Marvin deserted his bride, going into the west. She afterwards procured a divorce and it is said to be now living with her parents at her former home...
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