THIS week 150 years ago, The Northern Echo was agog with details of a court case that had everything: multi-millions of pounds, a lost will, families at war and a grisly exhumation at the dead of night in a country churchyard.

George Johnson, the paper explained, had emigrated from his native Northallerton in the 1820s and made a fortune worth about £120,000 – about £14.5m in today’s values, according to the Bank of England Inflation Calculator – from a factory in New York.

Towards the end of his life, he had returned to his birthplace to be near his sisters, Mary Harland, 77, and Jane Ault, 74, whom he looked after financially.

Mr Fowls, a Northallerton solicitor drew up a will for him and, ten days before he died, he repeated to Mary that “you’ll find it all right”. The Echo of March 21, 1871, then says: “He began to cry, saying that he was going to die.”

Mr Johnson had no children, but his “heir-at-law” was his nephew, who had worked for him in America so unsatisfactorily that Mr Johnson had paid for him to go on a one-way ticket to Australia, “declaring that he would do nothing more for him, and he didn’t wish to see him again”. The nephew, though, had re-appeared in Northallerton a month before Mr Johnson had died in April 1871.

After Mr Johnson's death, his sisters searched high and low for his new will, but could not find it, “the impression being that it is made away with”. The suspicion fell on the nephew who, it was alleged had buried it with the old man in Brompton churchyard.

The sisters were granted permission by the Home Secretary to exhume the body to try and find it.

“This strange proceeding was carried out quietly at midnight, only the persons immediately concerned being there,” said the Echo. “It took, however, some three or four hours to complete the work.

“From what we have been able to ascertain, the three coffins in which the body was placed were taken into the church porch and then opened, not without considerable difficulty.

“A further difficulty was encountered in removing the body, owing to its being distended with gas.

“The coffins and corpse were thoroughly ransacked, but the missing will could not be found, when the body was again interred.”

The Court of Probate then agreed that an emergency hearing should be held in Darlington “to take the evidence of the two aged sisters of the deceased in case of death, which it was thought might occur at their advanced age”.

Fortunately, the doddery old dears managed to maintain their fingerhold on life long enough to travel into Darlington and to testify how Mr Johnson had given them a pension each, bought them a pony and carriage, and had promised them that he would look after them in his will.

Jane, who had lived with Mr Johnson in America for 21 years, told the court “she remembered him saying when on his deathbed that she would find it all right”.

“The evidence as above given terminated the case,” concluded the Echo. “The matter will further go before the Court of Probate.”