Hi Joe,   The will did serve the purpose to divide equally whatever personal property the testator had.  The purpose of a will, then and now, is to have one's assets distributed as one wishes, not as the law directs.  If the testator in question had done nothing, his eldest son would have inherited by operation of law anything he had.  The term for that is primogeniture.  The law in the colonies followed that prescription until we became the U.S. and then the operation of law was everything is divided equally.     I've seen lots of Chancery cases where property was owned by someone who died intestate and sometimes as late as 20 to 30 years later one of the heirs sues for division.  I crumbled two of my brick walls via Chancery cases, as enough time had elapsed so that not only children were mentioned, but if deceased, their children.  And I found one of them as I was paging through a Chancery book and my greatgrandmother's name just leapt off the page.  I would not have found this other than by accident.  Becky M ________________________________ From: "joslake@sbcglobal.net" <joslake@sbcglobal.net> To: lower-delmarva-roots@rootsweb.com Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2009 5:53:43 PM Subject: [LDR] How, if even possible, to find meaning when the only (apparently) available record is unclear or worse John Lyon and/or listers: The elongated subject line above probably is it's own answer, but in the context of John Lyons' response re Richard Lockwood, what reaction would result from a 1741 Ssx Co will which omitted the usual "bad health but sound mind" terminology; first named two executors; then phoenetically spelled an unintelligible spouses name; named 5 children; briefly mentioned "tenements and real estate" but omitted any & all ID of same, and that was about it. For what purpose?  There was an Inventory submitted (now virtually unreadable due to time) but that would have resulted in any event from an intestacy.  I have never found land deeds which could be tied to this will (altho they may be there, somewhere; perhaps in later generations ?).  No records found which indicate the executors did anything other than the inventory. Thus the will wasn't a semi-religious document;  it didn't dispose of any real estate (it did say the heirs were to share equally);  I suppose it could be said it filled some of the purposes of a will, but naturally it certainly leaves many genealogical questions unanswered. Few, if any, speculations would have any validity but one wonders if the testator had anything more in mind than "All my buddies "do" wills, so I'm gonna' do one".  :-) :-) Any ideas anyone? Joe Lake On 1/10/09 John Lyon wrote: > Alas, you've found one of those rare properties that seems to be unidentifiable by > any of my devices.  I recall coming across this one years ago and spending a little > time trying to unravel the mystery, to no avail.  Richard Lockwood appears in no > land records context up to the point of his will and the tract title appears > nowhere except in the Debt Book, in any land or probate reference of any kind up to > the Revolution.  Trying to edge in on the tract name by the possibility it was an > alias for a part of a larger survey title yields no fruit.  Using geographic fixes > by by mapping triangulation against the tax lists offered nothing likely, and I > abandoned the field. > > How Lockwood came by it, in any event, is not explained.  You might consider the > possibility that he did not actually own it, but was conveying in his will the > rights to an unrecorded lease.  This does turn out to be an occasional answer in > similar situations. > > But I just don't know.  This is one of those for which the surviving data doesn't > seem to be enough. > > John > *************************************** QUESTIONS about POSTING GUIDELINES, SUBSCRIBING or UNSUBSCRIBING? Visit The Lower DelMarVa Roots Mailing List FAQ: http://www.tyaskin.com/handley/ldrfaq.htm ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to LOWER-DELMARVA-ROOTS-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message