Dear friends, I've spent the day today transcribing and summarizing the contents of both estate files from the NC Archives (Polk County Loose Estate Files) regarding the Estate of Benjamin HOLBERT. It's a fascinating story about a mountain farmer who had a large family and then died without a will. Benjamin and his wife Charity Stover Holbert owned hundreds of acres in what became known as Holbert's Cove in Rutherford (now Polk) County, NC, on Big and Little Cove Creek, which run down parallel to the Green River Cove between Saluda and Silver Creek, as well as on neighboring Alton's Creek. Benjamin Holbert was considered quite wealthy before the Civil War--his real and personal property in 1860 was valued at $10,510, which evidently included the eight slaves he owned (Augustus and Kizzie and their children, probable ancestors of most of the African American Holberts in the western NC area). In contrast, Benjamin's value in 1870 was a mere $675. Benjamin and Charity had 13 children: Sophia (m. Stephen Cowart), Sarah (m. Greenberry Arledge), Joseph (m. Elzira King and Mary Newman), Rebecca (m. Isaac Arledge), Jacob (m. Nancy Dimsdale), John (m. Maden Foster and Rebecca King), Benjamin (m. Mary Carroll), Abraham, Caroline (m. John L. Thompson), Elizabeth (m. Clement Arledge), Charity (m. Thomas Newman and Ransom Foster), Francis (m. Elizabeth Jones), and Mary Pamela (m. Eli Jackson). Abraham seems to have been killed during the Civil War; Sophia, Sarah and Benjamin died young, but left children who were heirs to their grandfather's estate. [Sarah Holbert Arledge was my great-great-great-grandmother, mother of John Pinkney Arledge, who was the father of John Aden Arledge, the father of John Thomas "Jack" Arledge, my grandfather.] What complicated matters was that Sophia Cowart, Jacob Holbert, John Holbert, and Benjamin Holbert Jr. all moved to the Cherokee County, Georgia area (which is, ironically, the county in which I now work). The fact that the family was divided between Georgia and North Carolina made the settlement of the estate quite complicated. These documents contains information about Holbert, Arledge, Coward/Cowart and many related and neighboring families that lived in the Green River/Holbert's Cove area of Polk and Henderson Counties of NC, such as Newman, Jackson, Hamilton, Foster, Thompson, Bradley, Justice, Nelson, Morris, etc. It also contains some of the estate papers of Ambrose Mills, though I'm not sure why--they don't seem to be in any way connected to the Holbert case, and may have been misfiled. To view my summary of these documents, please click on http://www.geocities.com/wilson_pam/holbert/BenjaminHolbertEstate.html Please let me know if this is useful to you and/or if you have any questions. My fingers are tired,, but it feels good to have actually completed a task like this that I've been trying to get done for a couple of years! Pam ************************************* Pam Wilson [email protected] Marietta, GA List Administrator, EFSS-L (Early Families in Southern States), HOLBERT-L and LAWLER-L through Rootsweb.com Associate list administrator, Arledge/Aldridge list ([email protected]) Coordinator, Arledge Family History Project http://www.geocities.com/heartland/prairie/8208