FIRST ANNUAL BANQUET. 117 



largely increased in future by the leasing or improvement 

 of the remainder. 



All this property was devised by Mr. Shaw, upon the ex- 

 press trusts already mentioned, to certain persons named or 

 desiornated in his will, who should toQjether constitute a 

 Board of Trustees, and who are required to keep written 

 minutes of their proceedings. This Board has no corporate 

 character. It is simply a body of individuals, all alike and 

 equally charged, as co-trustees, with the execution of the 

 trusts declared in the will, and who are subject, like all other 

 trustees, to the supervision and control of a court of equity 

 in the performance of their duties. The will does not con- 

 fer upon any Trustee any power or precedence as such ; 

 but it declares that the acts of a majority of the members 

 of said Board, at any meeting regularly called and held up- 

 on due notice, shall be deemed and taken, for all the pur- 

 poses of said trust, to be the acts of said Board and of said 

 Trustees. It designated nineteen devisees, fourteen of them 

 by name, the remaining five by style of oflBce, namely — fol- 

 lowing: the order of the will — the Chancellor of Washing- 

 ton University, the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of 

 Missouri, the President of the Public Schools, the Presi- 

 dent of the St. Louis Academy of Science, and the Mayor of 

 the City of St. Louis, and their respective successors in of- 

 fice. Four of the devisees named in the will having died 

 before Mr. Shaw, — the late Gerard B. Allen and Adolphus 

 Meier of this city, Dr. Asa Gray, the distinguished botan- 

 ist, of Cambridge, and Professor Baird, late Secretary of the 

 Smithsonian Institution, — it has been judicially determined 

 that the number of Trustees was thereby reduced to fifteen 

 in all. The actual number of Trustees at present is four- 

 teen, the office of Chancellor of Washington University be- 

 ing temporarily vacant. 



In order to assure the validity and permanency of this 

 trust, Mr. Shaw obtained, thirty years ago, the passage by 

 the Legislature of Missouri of a special Act, approved 

 March 14, 1859, expressly referred to in his will. This Act 



