Carol Caswell

The Story in the Little Brown Suitcase Carol Caswell

Rich fur traders, an unscrupulous adventurer, a fateful fight on a New York pier, an old sea chest, a will lost for over one hundred years, a beautiful heiress, the sinking of the Titanic, stolen documents, arson, and possibly even murder are a part of the story found in Elsie Emerick Bryan's Little Brown Suitcase. Elsie kept The Little Brown Suitcase under her bed most of her adult life. Papers and letters in the suitcase reveal how her relative, John Nicholas Emerick, partner to John Jacob Astor I, lost control of his vast fortune and how it ultimately all ended up in Astor's pockets. The story recounts the struggle by Elsie and her family to reclaim their rightful inheritance. It tells of hopes placed on a passenger traveling home from Europe on the Titanic; a passenger who could right this great wrong. Authentic letters from the seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen hundreds, located in The Little Brown Suitcase, were used in the development of this story. This story has not been told before. While being presented here as historical fiction, many of the events in this turbulent tale are true.