My friends - Today, we are going to look at another Kentucky Court of Appeals case. This one originated in the McCracken County Common Pleas Court and was heard by the Court of Appeals in the January Term, 1878. As a side note, and before getting into the details of this case, I will mention that I have today assumed the host responsibility for the KYMcCrac-L mail list, which is the county list for McCracken County. I now host all of the county lists for the JP region, with the exception of Carlisle County. Also, those of you with requests still pending from yesterday's data posting will receive responses to those later tonight, or before the end of the day tomorrow. I have had an unusually busy day today, with some interruptions that caused loss of computer time. But I will get those items to you as rapidly as possible. Our Appeals Court case today involved another example of how valuable - and often interesting - some of these items can be to our research. In this case, there was a question of jurisdiction involving whether an equity court can recognize a will as being valid, when the law directs that such authority is apparently invested in the county courts. In this case, Alice Thompson appealed a ruling of the McCracken Court of Common Pleas, which had established as a valid Will, a portion of a letter that Mrs. Thompson's son, Andrew P., had written to them prior to his death, based upon the allegation that it was fraudulently suppressed. The Appeals Court ruled that the Court of Common Pleas did not have original jurisdiction in the matter and could not establish the portion of the letter in question as a valid Will, without action from the McCracken County Court admitting the alleged Will to probate. The case was remanded to the lower court with directions to sustain the objection of Mrs. Thompson. If we were researching this family, it would certainly be of great interest to us to know what was in that letter that Andrew P. Thompson wrote to his parents before his death. Since the KY Court of Appeals case files are generally intact from 1865, it would be possible to obtain the case file and it is likely that a copy of the letter would be contained within that file. I plan to try to obtain this case file, in order to review the documents contained in it, and I will keep you posted on what I find. It is an unusual case, and the fact that the mother wished to avoid having the letter admitted as a valid Will, peaks my interest in it. As is now customary, there will be no data posts to the JP List tomorrow or on the weekend. Since tomorrow is Friday, our booksellers may have some items to offer, in compliance with the guidelines set up for "Booksellers' Friday". I will hopefully have a report for you early next week on the Graves County Order Book G CD beta testing. I have had some preliminary reports from some of our testers and things seem to be going well. -B ====================================================================