First, Happy New Year List and best of luck in your searches this year. I was able to get into the new online records and found my male ancestor named guardian to his brother's children in 1843. Does this mean the mother had died too? Or could mothers not be guardian's of their own children then? The new information was wonderful, but I'm still trying to unravel it all.

It does not mean the mother had died. Men were made guardians, not women. Phyllis -----Original Message----- I was able to get into the new online records and found my male ancestor named guardian to his brother's children in 1843. Does this mean the mother had died too?

On Fri, 1 Jan 2010 08:07:19 -0800 (PST), Sandy Wallace <sandyhwallace@sbcglobal.net> wrote: >I was able to get into the new online records and found my male ancestor named guardian to his brother's children in 1843. Does this mean the mother had died too? Or could mothers not be guardian's of their own children then? The new information was wonderful, but I'm still trying to unravel it all. I have a case where the father was named guardian of his own child. This was because the child, a minor, received an inheritance from his deceased mother's father. So a legal guardian was named to manage the inheritance until the boy was 21 years old. So the answer to your question might involve the circumstances for which the guardianship was required. I also vaguely recall a situation similar to your's ... where the widow's brother was named guardian of her minor children. -- Dennis Kowallek - kowallek@iglou.com Research in Butler Co., Ohio http://butler.kowallekfamily.com/index.htm