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	Fanny Spencer Wilder 1837 - 1903 (click image to enlarge)

As Amherst grew older, his concern about what would become of his estate if all members of his family were to die in a common accident, or if Cornelia were to die childless, led him to establish a trust fund to benefit the citizens of Saint Paul and to perpetuate his name. Amherst died in 1894 at the age of 66.

A few years after Wilder's death, Cornelia Day married Dr. T. E. W. Villiers Appleby, a physician whom she met while serving as a volunteer clerk at the St. Paul Free Dispensary. Dr. Appleby signed an antenuptial contract wherein he renounced any claim to the Wilder family fortune. Four years later Cornelia died at the age of 35 from complications following surgery. The Applebys had no children.

Fanny Spencer Wilder died at the age of 65 on April 5, 1903, three months after her daughter's death, apparently from heart trouble.

Both Fanny Spencer Wilder and Cornelia Day Wilder Appleby left their fortunes to establish separate Wilder Charity corporations in memory of their husband and father, respectively. Mr. Wilder's will had already established the endowment for the Amherst H. Wilder Charity.

The first expenditure from one of the charities was made on July 7, 1906, Mr. Wilder's birth date, to a widow in Saint Paul with two children. In December 1910, under a separate act of the state legislature, the three Wilder Charities were merged into the Amherst H.Wilder Charity, with total assets of $2.6 million. Continue...