In a message dated 1/29/2004 12:01:36 PM Pacific Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:


> Let's all take a moment to be thanful for those ancestors who wrote things
> like "my son Robert has already been provided for so will have no further
> part of my estate."
>
> Mickey
>

My thanks go to those he even bothered to have a will!   Actually my families
did pretty good (25% of the males) relatively in the 1700s, early 1800s in
PA/VA/TN/NC, but then around 1820, it all went to he!! in a handbasket.   NONE
of my 15 ancestors in Lawrence and Dade Co. Mo, (begin 1840s) had a will until
1915 -- except one 3g grandmother Franky (MURRELL) Williams, who only had one
I figure because when her husband died in the 1880s, there was a brouhaha over
a sorrell mare, and his intentions therefrom.  She gave everything to one
daughter with whom she had lived.

Then the one with the 1915 will (Hugh Lawson White Hill) said his wife had
all of his property, etc. until she died, then to be divided (in unspecified
manner) amongst his many children.  Well the wife, Sarah Elizabeth Tennessee GAY,
died in the 1920s, and the kids all fought over who got what piece of his
land.  They had to get intermediaries to divvy it up, and there were protesters
to that (my grandfather was an executor and I have all his papers).   My father
and his siblings did not sell their mother's share of the land until the late
1950s (to my mother's first cousin of course).  I have a copy of that deed,
which refers to the [chancery type] court settlement as their mother's legal
right to the property.  The land was purchased probably 1870/80.  Nothing on the
deed books for 80 years.  The wife of one great grandson I know of is still
on the land today.  There has been no deed activity there for 120 years!

If we didn't have these puzzles it would be no fun at all!

Janet Hunter

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