Cornie hadn’t had the wherewithal to try to break the Commodore’s will by himself. In that enterprise, he had joined with his sisters Ethelinda and Mary. They would have been mad not to. One hundred million dollars, all to Billy, with only a few hundred thousand dollars for everyone else? They filed a formal objection to the probating of the will in Surrogate Court in March 1877, two months after the Commodore’s death,
