Dedication plaque on Uris Library referencing Henry W. Sage's gift in lieu of Jennie McGraw's estate payment after the resolution of The Great Will Case
In August 1880, he married Jennie McGraw, at the American Legation in Berlin. McGraw was the daughter of deceased timbermagnateJohn McGraw, and had inherited $2,202,593 dollars upon his death in 1877. Their marriage was short, and by September 1881 she had died from tuberculosis. Controversy over her will's bequest to Cornell left him involved in the The Great Will Case.[1][2][3] Following its resolution in May 1890, he spent much of his remaining years in Italy, and collected manuscripts.
His interests included chess: he helped organize the first American Chess Congress in 1857 and wrote the tournament book in 1859, and edited The Chess Monthly from 1857 to 1861 with Paul Morphy. His scholarly volume, Chess In Iceland and in Icelandic Literature (Florence, 1905), was used as source material by H.J.R. Murray for A History of Chess. Another manuscript, Chess Tales and Chess Miscellanies (New York, 1912), also published posthumously, is an anthology covering chess life of the period including articles about Morphy, problems by Sam Loyd, and the history of chess including some fables.
On September 17, 1904 Fiske died at Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He is buried next to his wife Jennie McGraw Fiske in the elaborate crypt of Sage Chapel at Cornell University. After his death he left a large bequest of 32,000 volumns, the Fiske Icelandic Collection, to Cornell[4].
