Lithopolis Strikes It Rich

Lithopolis, Ohio (pop. 300) hasn't changed much since stagecoaches to Columbus stopped there 75 years ago. The village has two restaurants, four churches and an undertaker--but no railroad station, bank or high school. Most Lithopolitans are in the farming or feed business. But Lithopolis has something most hamlets haven't. It has $2,565,788.

Dictionary Publisher Adam Wagnalls (born Wagenhals) of Funk & Wagnalls was born in' Lithopolis in 1843. When daughter Mabel Wagnalls Jones died two years ago, in Manhattan, she left most of her estate to the little town. Last week tax appraisers finally put a price tag on her unusual bequest. The money hadn't been left to the citizens themselves (though several tried to collect their "share"), but to the Wagnalls Memorial.

The memorial is a Gothic community center built by Mrs. Jones in 1925. It once housed an Esperanto school, still contains an art gallery and 8,000 books. Lithopolitans go there for movies and organ concerts. Last week the memorial had also become an educational cornucopia.

The Wagnalls bequest authorized the memorial's six trustees to award scholarships of $100 a semester to every Lithopolis (or Bloom Township) boy & girl who wanted to go to college, no matter what his grades or promise. Last week the first two scholarships had been approved: Marilyn Good, 18, would study the organ at Ohio's Otterbein College, and Donald Speakman, 18, was planning to take up farming at Ohio State. But Lithopolitans were worried. As Mrs. Mabel Stevenson, the memorial's secretary, said: "With all this new money, you can't tell just what kind of people it will bring here. But the trustees are planning to limit the awards to permanent residents."

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