A case of considerable interest was tried before Hon. Clifford D. Gregory in the month of March, 1899, in the city of Albany, New York. It was entitled the "People of the State of New York against Margaret E. Cody," as charged with the crime of blackmail, in the sending of a letter to Mr. George J. Gould, in which she threatened to divulge certain information which she claimed to possess about his dead father, Jay Gould. The character of this information was such that if true it meant that Jay Gould and his wife had lived in bigamous relations during a great number of years preceding their death and hence also affected the legitimacy of the entire Gould family. Mrs. Cody asserted that Jay Gould was married to a Mrs. Angel some time in 1853, and that as a result of that "lawful" marriage she gave birth to a daughter, a Mrs. Pierce, who was still alive and living somewhere in the west. As Mrs. Cody offered to sell or secrete the information which she said she possessed for a consideration, Mr. George J. Gould and his sister, Miss Helen Gould, instantly determined that it could be nothing else than a clear case of an attempt at blackmail, which falsely impugned the reputations of their dead parents. They instituted criminal proceedings against Mrs. Cody, charging that Mrs. Cody when she wrote the letter well knew that her claim that his father had been married to Mrs. Angel and that Mrs. Pierce was their daughter, was absolutely false. Two trials followed, the first in 1898 in which the jury disagreed, and a second one in 1899 which lasted over a week. It was in the second trial that chemical tests on a certain entry in a church record in the presence of the jury were made, which showed conclusively that ancient writing of another character than that which had been substituted was still existent beneath the writing which was apparent to the naked eye. The following are excerpts of the judge's charge to the jury: "I wish to invite your attention, for a few moments, to the baptismal certificate. You have had produced here before you the original baptismal record of the church at Cooperville. It has been substantially admitted, in the arguments of this case, that there has been a change made in this certificate. I do not think that the District Attorney claims that there is any evidence that Mrs. Cody herself changed this record; there is no claim, as I understand it, made by the prosecuting officer that she went there and obtained this book, and with her own hand changed this record; but he asks you to infer and find from the evidence that has been given, that she was a party to this change, that she was privy to this change, and that knowing that fact she had guilty knowledge when she wrote the letter upon which the indictment is based.