There was and I believe still is an obscure law on the books in
Virginia that while a woman's children are automatically her heirs  -
a man's children are NOT automatically his heirs...  I have heard that
this was to protect an estate from any claims of illegitimate children
a man may have.

I don't know about "adopted" children though.


On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 6:03 PM, Bill Davidson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I have a case where a "Smith infant/toddler" was taken-in by John and
> Mary (Bennett) Brown around 1817-1820 in Middlesex Co., VA.  DNA
> testing on a living male descendant shows that this infant/toddler was
> a "biological Smith" who was a member of the same overall Smith
> family as the John Smith who married Sarah Waller (daughter of Judge
> Benjamin Waller of Williamsburg) around 1788.  This child was named
> and reared as Smith W. BROWN, however, by his new "Brown
> guardians."
>
> It appears that John Smith and Sarah Waller MAY very well have been
> the parents of this child, and it appears that Mrs. Sarah (Waller)
> Smith was dead by at least the 1820 census (she MAY have died as a
> result of having the referenced child...she would have been about the
> age of 50 in 1817).  If Smith W. Brown was, in fact, a child of John and
> Sarah (Waller) Smith, it appears that the widower John Smith gave this
> son to his "new Brown guardians" while John Smith was still alive
> (though John Smith was probably in ill health at the time, and perhaps
> unable to care for an infant son, since John Smith was also dead by at
> least 1822).
>
> Note: Mrs. Mary (Bennett) Brown was also a descendant of the
> referenced overall Smith family (but out of a different "branch" of that
> family), so she and her husband John Brown were "viable candidates" to
> have taken-in a Smith child.
>
> In 1822, there was a chancery court case where the "representatives of
> the heirs of John Smith" were to divide the "estate of Maurice Smith"
> (Maurice Smith was the father of John Smith, and when Maurice Smith
> died back in 1795, he left his entire estate to his only son John
> Smith...though John Smith had three sisters).  This 1822 chancery case
> distributed the remaining estate of Maurice Smith (which MAY have
> been slaves only, but I am not sure about that) to
> three "representatives of the heirs of John Smith."  The division was not
> equal....i.e., it was not simply 33 1/3 to each of these
> three "representatives"...so the percentage that each "representative"
> was to receive MAY have been dependent on all of the younger (and
> unnamed) family members in each of these "three branches of the
> Smith family."
>
> Note: I have seen what appears to be only a SUMMARY of the
> referenced chancery case (this "summary" was found in the papers of
> George H. S. King at the Virginia Historical Society).  I need to read the
> entire/full court case, but I will have to go to the Middlesex courthouse
> to do it, since the Middlesex chancery cases available at the LOVa stop
> in 1820...and I need the cases from 1822.
>
> The three people listed as "representatives of the heirs of John Smith"
> were: 1) the husband of one of John Smith's living sisters, 2) the
> husband of one of John Smith's own daughters, and 3) the only adult
> son of John Smith in 1822 (James Smith).  This excluded any mention of
> the Brown family, who had taken-in Smith W. "Brown."  Is this
> particularly surprising, or do guardians of a child...and/or the child
> himself/herself...forfeit any "direct/automatic" benefit from the
> distribution of an estate from the child's "original/biological family?"
>
> What I am trying to determine, of course, is whether or not the
> exclusion of Smith W. Brown and/or his "Brown guardians" in the above
> chancery case necessarily means that Smith W. Brown was NOT a son
> of John Smith and Sarah Waller after all.  It appears that the "heirs of
> John Smith" were to divided the estate of John Smith's FATHER Maurice
> Smith....versus dividing the estate of John Smith himself....and I can't
> help but wonder if that MIGHT be a "significant detail" in all of this.
>
> Comments on the above?  Thanks.
>
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