 | This article provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject. (November 2016) |
Mary Alice Heinbach (born 9 June 1854, Pennsylvania; d. 23 January 1928, in Ilasco, Missouri) became known for a seventeen-year legal struggle, together with her sister Euphemia B. Koller (nicknamed "Feemy"), to retain possession of land she inherited in 1910 from her late husband, Sam M. Heinbach, in Ilasco. Atlas Portland Cement Company, the major industry in town, wanted to buy the land, which comprised much of the unincorporated town site.
After the case reached the Missouri State Supreme Court four times, it resulted in the county probate court placing a guardianship over Heinbach in 1921. It asserted that she was incapable of managing the land. A circuit court judge ordered a sheriff's sale of the land to Atlas Portland Cement Company, which virtually ran the town and had wanted to acquire the property from the beginning of the litigation.[1]
Koller tried to overturn the sale and expose the political complexities of the town. In 1927 the court ordered her to be confined to Missouri's State Hospital Number One for the Insane. She was held here until her death at age sixty-eight.
- ^ Whites, LeeAnn; Neth, Mary C.; Kremer, Gary R. (3 March 2014). Women in Missouri History: In Search of Power and Influence. University of Missouri Press. ISBN 9780826264138.