This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/SFk.2ACIB/1300.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1 Message Board Post: Early letters mention Joseph House, son of John Valentine House, as not married but this letter proves he had at least two daughters. Mr A G Russell, Connellsville, Feb 15th, 1893 Dear Sir: I received your letter last evening and was very glad to hear from you. I think you take a just view of the case, and I would say here I am willing to pay my five dollars now, and would be glad to see all the heirs do the same, but I will not bind myself to pay for other heirs as your five dollars and mine will not do the work, as Mr Anderson wants five dollars from each of the heirs. How does he expect to get that amount? Can you tell? I will execute the papers Mr Anderson sent to me when the money is raised. I will do all I can to get the heirs of our side to pay $5 dollars and if I fail then what? There is five of us< DAVID BARNES, WILLIAM A BARNES, HAMILTON BARNES, JOSEPH and Z. E. BARNES, that would be $25 dollars, then JAMES HOUSE and WILLIAM HOUSE. I never saw Uncle JOSEPH HOUSE and do not know how many children he had, you are mistaken about my saying that JOSEPH HOUSE told me about ANDREW HOUSE. It was my brother JOSEPH BARNES, that told me about the ANDREW HOUSE family., and CALVIN RICHARD of RUTH DOWNS family. They had been out in your neighborhood for some years as I was told. CALVIN RICHARDS met two of UNCLE JOSEPH'S daughters and brought me their photographs and I would like to hear from them if you know where they are? They had been consulting a lawyer in their neighborhood for some years, so I was told. CALVIN RICHARDS is dead and CLAYTON RICHARDS and WILLIAM RICHARDS are all that family living out here. WILLIAM is in the West now. You can find out whether they will give anything to start the matter. I have spent about five hundred dollars in my life in traveling from the East Kentucky and paying board at hotels in and out of Maryland, looking up a point to start from when I thought everything was ready, put it into Mr Ing's hands and he has done nothing and Judge Bond of Baltimore told me he would do nothing that he was too lazy. Now there never was anything done in the case, unless Mr Pigman of Cumberland had made the beginning in the life of my father DAVID BARNES as I have not seen his papers yet. I traced them to a Mr Shrivers, Commission House on Prat Street in Baltimore city and found they were in barrels, and not being a lawyer enough to know just how to do the thing up, Brown told Lawyer! Ing where the papers were and asked him to do the work and he would not do it and there the case stands. What is in the papers I do not know, I hope Mr Anderson will have time and energy to take all the barrels of Mr Pigman's papers. and see if there is anything about Antietam and DAVID BARNES and Mr BRIN and MC PHERSON or SARAH HOUSE, for both Father and Mother were then at Barnes house when he lived in Cumberland, Maryland, and he told my father that he would have a Writ of Ejecetment served on Brin just as soon as the time was up at 99 years, and my mother the same thing, also told them that he had the thing fixed so that their children would get the property after they were dead, and not to fear about it. I do not want to go with anyone because all the people about Antietam know me, but brother JOSEPH BARNES, I think will go, at the proper time, when we get the papers fixed up in proper shape. Now you have the most of the heirs out there, write to all of them as soon as you can, telling them just what we propose to do in the case. Let us get to work and as you say, see what it will pan out. I think Mr Andreson is a man who will work up the case. ( end of page 2, will be continued) Posted just as written, misspelled words and all.