When you know your death will be widely publicized due to your wealth or notoriety, it can be very tempting to fashion the story of your legacy to ensure people would still be talking about it a century (or more) later. In some cases, it was a joke. In other cases, it was just something weird that we still read about.
An eighth of a million dollars ain't what it used to be, but even back then it probably wasn't all that much when you're raising nine kids. Read more of the weirdest sendoffs and bequests at Cracked.