CHAP. 69.—Am ACT to permit the county of Rockingham, through its board
of supervisors, to accept donations and trusts made for benevolent or
charitable objects of a public character within its territorial limits,
and to perform such conditions and execute such trusts as mav be
connected with the same.

Approved February 29, 1912.

Whereas a citizen of this commonwealth has manifested a
desire by his last will and testament to bestow his estate, or a
part thereof, upon the county of Rockingham, on condition that
said county shall forever pay interest on the amount received by
it to the Rockingham memorial hospital, a corporation without
capital stock incorporated to establish and conduct a hospital in
the town of Harrisonburg, in the said county, the interest so
paid to be applied by the hospital authorities to the discharge
of the expenses in the hospital of indigent patients from the
county of Rockingham and the town of Harrisonburg; and some
doubt existing as to the legal competency of a county of this
State to accept a gift of the sort proposed; and it being deemed
to be in accordance with sound public policy and the public good
to sanction and permit the acceptance of a gift of the sort so
proposed, or others of a like or similar character or object;
therefore,

1. Be it enacted by the general assembly of Virginia, That
the county of Rockingham shall be capable, through its board of
supervisors, to accept any donation or any trust made for bene-
volent or charitable objects of a public nature, not religious or
sectarian, within its external territorial limits, and to perform
such conditions and execute such trusts as may be imposed upon
it by the terms of the instrument by which the donation is made
or the trust is created. .

No such gift or trust, if accepted by the board of supervisors,
shall be declared or held to be void for insufficient designation
of the beneficiaries or uncertainty as to the objects thereof, but
in all such cases the gift, grant, devise or bequest, as the case
may be, shall be valid; and in any case where, under the prin-
ciples now governing in courts of equity, the objects or benefici-
aries of the donation or trust are so undefined or uncertain as
not to admit of specific enforcement or administration by a
court of equity, the same, if accepted by the county authorities,
shall be administered or executed so as to effectuate as nearly
as may be the intent or object of the donor or founder.