This could happen, still happens today. In my family, James Kline, an emigrant, moved to St. Boniface. He ran a bar/hotel, married an Anstead girl, and had two daughters. I am not sure how he died, but his wife married again Joseph. All were German speaking emigrants from Leimen Rhineland, and None of them could speak English. I think Joseph was guardian, but Squire Paul Yahner was involved somehow. Joseph sued Squire Yahner because there was no more money, He has some idea that the Squire has spent the money, and they all went to court, with a translator. Seems Joseph had no idea how far the money would go, spent it, and thought it would last forever. Squire Yahner proved to the court that Joseph spent it. Joseph and family moved to Latrobe where he worked in a brewery and they had two sons. Joseph drank, got drunk, chased his wife with a hatchet in front of a passing street car, killed her and then shot himself. The girls were married and the two boys were teenagers. I don't know what happened to them. It took me 5 years to get those details. Marilyn Kline Washington -----Original Message----- From: jcrissman101 <[email protected]> To: marilyn <[email protected]> Sent: Tue, Oct 18, 2011 10:15 am Subject: Re: [PACAMBRI] Fwd: Guardianship and/or Wards of the Courth When Sebastian Hog (hogue) died, his brother-in-law was appointed guardian for 3 f the children. Theyy continued living with their Mother. The brother-in-la was aken to court and charged with misuse of his duties. Another guardian was ppointed. Then brother-in-law moved to Texas. ois Crissman --- marilyn <[email protected]> wrote: I forgot to include the entire membership. Please, if you have any examples f guardianship or wards of the court, let me know. I don't use anyone's names, ut I likewto have examples. I recently realized that there are only two embers of my Kline family older than I am, so that limits my sources. Marilyn Kline Washington -----Original Message----- From: marilyn <[email protected]> To: wanda713 [email protected]; Sent: Mon, Oct 17, 2011 5:05 pm Subject: Guardianship and/or Wards of the Courth This is what I understand from my reading the Orphans Court records and rom my own family and from correspondents. One: Only men could be financial guardians. A mother would retain physical ustody of her children, but if her husband died, another MALE had to be ppointed financial guardian. One other example I found, a doctor was appointed guardian because he aid a 14 year old girl needed an appendicitis operation and her mother refused o permit it. It was dangerous then, but the girl lived. If anyone knows what year a woman could be the legal guardian of her hildren, I would appreciate if you shared the information. Two: there were two classes of minors who needed guardians: those under 14 and hose over 14. I don't know many details, but those over 14 had more control ver their lives, though not the money. The legal age of majority was 21 when ny money was handed over to the child. Three: If there was a will, the guardian had to follow it. Regardless of the ill, if a husband died the wife was entitled to $300 Dower or Widows' ettlement. If she was taking it in household goods or farm products, she had irst choice. Otherwise the guardian had the liberty to manage the money. Stepfathers had very bad reputations as guardians, often using up the money efore the child was 21. There were usually local men of good character and [probably money] who tended o act as guardians, as most emigrants could read or write. Often the Squires ad to translate. They were called "Squire"--in this area we had Squire Thomas tt in St. Boniface and Squire Paul Yahner in Elder Township. Ott ran a store, otel and bar. Yahner was a farmer and surveyor. Both men wrote wills for the ocals and went to court when there was need. I could not really say that they ere guardians of unrelated minors. Sometimes a guardian or person controlling someone else's money had to have a ond to guarantee the inheritance. Four: Mostly the guardian was a stepfather or other relative. Few women could upport themselves and their family, so they generally remarried. My grandfather in 1916, became the guardian of his oldest brothers' [about] 0 children when his brother, Frank, was killed in the mines. Frank's wife had newborn. She was the first miner's wife in PA to receive a miner's widow's ension, so she and the children could manage, the older children working. My randfather sold the extra property and invested the money at the local bank. n each child's 21st birthday he would withdraw a draft for that child's share nd deliver it. My mother said it was a ceremony. I understand some of the ousins did quite well with the interest. I don't know what they did with the oney, but purchasing a house was probably a priority, especially if they were arried or wished to marry. My mother's sister married into a family where the mother died in the 918 flu epidemic, and the father died while some of the children were quite oung. I think the the oldest brother was the guardian, and when the youngest hild, a daughter, was 21, the estate was settled and she bought a house for 500. A lot then. Five: Minor children sometimes left the parents for some reason. Someone old me her ancestor left at age 14 and was appointed a guardian, and this uardian signed her marriage license. In her research she later found out the uardian was the Director of the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children. n this case, there was probably abuse of some kind. I said that minors 14 or ver had different rules--maybe the 14 year old could leave the parents egally??? Six: Most parents, especially emigrants, needed the income from all of the hildren, so they wanted the children to stay home till they were 21. They did ot believe the State had the right to make them send their children to school. t was extremely difficult for the schools to enforce attendance of the children t any age. In this area, a boy at age 12 could enter the mines with his parent or uardian. The School District was made responsible for certifying the age. [This is something I read in the newspaper.] The mine inspectors came and were checking the ages of the boys. They had he school principal with them. They all, inspectors, fathers and boys, walked rom the mine on the south of Hastings [Mitchell Mines or Lanark] about 7 or 8 lock to the Catholic Church. Few emigrants registered births, but most aptized the children. So the priest got out his baptismal registry and checked he age of each boy--his word was accepted. I don't know what they did if the oy was not born in the US. Also, from reading the papers and talking to a friend of my mother who was a eacher in the one-room schools, I think that the emigrant children who could ot speak English were kept in Grade one until they could. This is based on the umbers of children in each grade, which was printed in the weekly newspaper, aper also with six-weekly attendance and the names of the children with perfect ttendance. Many emigrant children had perfect attendance. Marilyn Kline Washington -----Original Message----- From: Wanda Barrett <[email protected]> To: marilyn <[email protected]> Sent: Mon, Oct 17, 2011 9:55 am Subject: Re: [Some Information about Marriage Certificates Marilyn, Thank you so much for the thorough explanation re marriage records in ennsylvania. This brings me to ask you about GUARDIANSHIPS. Case in point: In 1902, when my randmother was 17, her father died. He left her and her nephew (whose father had been fatally hot) inheritances. I found online (thanks to Patty Millich's transcribing the newspapers) that an unrelated uardian was appointed. When she turned 21, she got her inheritance and bought the farm she and my grandfather ived on for 50 years -- and she for almost 10 more years, before the farm was sold. Question: Was the court-appointed lawyer someone who the family named or was t someone chosen by the courts? Oddly enough, the nephew's widowed mother married someone by the same urname abuot 6 years later! Of course, there were people by this surname who lived near my randmother at the time of guardianship. Was this to avoid the family cheating the heirs out of the inheritance? Then, too, her father had been guardian of three children nobody in the family nows anythting about. After his death, my grandmother's eldest brother (administrator of his dad's ill) had to go to court to transfer these chidlren to someone else. (This makes me doubt they were elatives of ours.) Thank you kindly, Marilyn. You've helped me through your emails to the group nd to those to me personally. Cordially, Wanda From: marilyn <[email protected]> To: [email protected]; [email protected] Sent: Sunday, October 16, 2011 7:05 PM Subject: [PACAMBRI] Some Information about Marriage Certificates I hope this information will help you with your research. If possible, ou should actually look at the original certificate--this is called primary esearch. A photocopy is almost as good, but often you will not get one if you o not ask for it. If you send to the Courthouse for a marriage certificate, in ome places the information is printed or copied onto a completely different orm. You are entitled to go to any Courthouse or repository and ask to see the riginals. That is why they are called Public Records. Not every place will ake photocopies, but the machines are so common now that if you ask for a hotocopy, the clerk will generally make you one. I think the legal age was 21 from the beginning in 1885. That has always een the legal majority in the US. I think it was a carryover from Europe. I hink it reflected the fact that parents wanted economic control over their hildren for as long as possible. Twenty one is a fairly old age in a time eriod when the average age was somewhere in the forties or so. Some of you may not know that in Europe, until Napoleon after 1800, the nly marriages that were legal had to be performed by some sort of religious erson. Napoleon started Civil Marriage as he was very anticlerical and ractically eliminated religion in France, and then in the other areas where he ad control. In America, a frontier country, there were few churches or ministers of the gospel." [Many Catholic priests were emigrants from France hat the French Revolution or Napoleon exiled.] Many people were not married by nyone, they made "professions" in front of the "elders" or followed some folk ustom, like "hand fasting." Father Gallitzin, our local frontier priest, arried people of many different religions. You took what was available. When aws were finally passed, all religious marriages [that conformed to the law] ere legal. Pennsylvania tried to record vital statistics in 1850. The Legislature andated them, and the existing counties started them. However, the Legislature id not pay for the records, so they were gradually abandoned. Some of the astern counties kept up Collection longer than here in the west. Indiana ounty has quite a few of them. Cambria County doesn't have many--someone ollected them in a small red pamphlet that was for sale. The historical ociety in Ebensburg has these printed copies, but I have never see the County riginals. If you want these 1850 Records, you usually have to ask for them. The ecords then contained slightly different data than in 1885, and included birth nd death records. Only Marriage Records were collected in 1885, the government eing concerned mainly about bigamy and child support. Birth and Death Records tarted in the Counties in 1893 and lasted till 1906 when the State took them ver. Marriage [and divorce] Records are still in the Counties. I don't know about other states, but age 21 was state wide in PA from 885. The early records were two pages, not one, and had a section for parental onsent. The actual form itself changed, but still asked for most of the same ata. Later the consent form was kept separate, but you can ask for them at the ld Jail Repository and they are available. I am not sure of the exact date that the age for parental consent was owered to 18, but it was about/after the 1960s. I think it was part of the ederal Government changing the voting age to 18, but I don't know the details. wenty one had been the legal majority which meant that anyone under 21 could ot legally sign any contract, including marriage. If you wanted a loan, for xample, you had to have a cosigner. The dept was not legal if you were not 21. hen I graduated from college, the week before graduation everyone who had a ederal Loan had to go to the treasurer's office and sign a new loan paper. By hat time most of us were 21. [This was 1959 for your information.] At some point after 1885 it was legal to fill out the marriage forms at he local JP or Squire, saving a trip to Ebensburg. The JP was responsible for aking the forms to Ebensburg. I think the Clerk there filled out the official orms, as many of them are not actually signed by the parties involved. The arties got a paper to take to the person who married them, and he had to return hat form to the Courthouse himself. After 1885 no one could be legally married y anyone if they did not have that form. This is a way to find out if your ancestors were literate. If they igned their name, they were at least partially literate, but perhaps in another anguage. If they made "their mark," they were not literate in any language. f they used another language, the Clerk generally added "Signed in German" or hatever language. You must also remember that "reading" and "writing" were riginally two separate skills, and most writing was done by professional lerks. More people could read than could write. Many emigrants' names were misspelled by the Clerks, but I noticed that he Priests from the Byzantine Rites [often referred to as the Greek Catholic hurches] would correct the spelling when they returned the signed marriage icense. The County Clerks were mostly Welsh, and they did not know other anguages, and spelled even English words as the Welsh did. Every "foreign" roup had persons who were translators and would go to Court or other English peaking places with their countrymen. The marriage was NOT LEGAL if the form from the JP, Squire, Priest or Minister of the Gospel," the wording on the forms, was not filled out and sent ack to the Courthouse. You would not think this was a problem, but since arriages by religious priests or ministers were legal in Pennsylvania [and most f the US], anything could happen. I know for a fact that some of the local orthern Cambria Priests [especially St. Boniface and St. Lawrence] did not feel he government had any business "interfering" with a religious marriage, and imply did not fill out the license or send the form in to the County ourthouse. So many of our ancestors were not legally married. It really didn't matter so much, as they were validly [religiously] arried and never knew about the missing information. If for some reason they eeded a marriage certificate, they got one from the church. If they did find ut or needed a legal marriage certificate from the Courthouse, all it took to ake it legal was they had to get a certificate from the church and attach it to he license in the bound volumes in the Courthouse. I have gone through the arriage records, page by page, and there are a lot of missing forms from the erson who "married" the couple and also many attached certificates. Also, some eople often did "get a license," but did not actually get married for some eason. In my experience from reading the actual certificates, this often appened with emigrants. Most people then got married if they were going to co-habitat. Social nd cultural pressure was too great to do anything else. If you have questions I can answer, I will. Most people who have not ooked at the original records do not have much of an ideal of what they really ook like or contain. A photo copy is good, but not perfect. A translation, specially when it is typed, is often misleading or lacks information available n the original. By its very nature, translation or copying, especially typing, ill tend to make information "uniform" and while that is good, it also can be isleading and incomplete. [ I taught research methods in the age before omputers, and It is different now.] Marilyn Kline Washington -----Original Message----- From: bobbyp2000 <[email protected]> To: PACAMBRI <[email protected]> Sent: Mon, Oct 10, 2011 9:30 am Subject: [PACAMBRI] Consent to marry This issue has also come up in our research of the Michael and Petronella opovich family.One of my uncle (Joseph) son of Michael and Petronella married n 1939. His wife was under 21 and needed parental permission. Several uestions. Was the law under 18 at one time and then changed to under 21? Was t lways under 21? At what jurisdiction level was this law set? State? County? omething else? When was this passed? Is it still in effect? Bob Poppy You anage things, you lead people. We went overboard on management and forgot bout eadership. It might help if we ran the MBAs out of Washington. Rear Admiral race Murray Hopper (Mother COBOL) ___________________________________________________________ 7-Year-Old Mom Looks 25 om Reveals $5 Wrinkle Trick That Has Angered Doctors! ttp://thirdpartyoffers.netzero.net/TGL3241/4e92f1de327acc49f7st01duc - - - - - - - - - Search for more Cambria County information on our webpage: ttp://www.camgenpa.com/ ------------------------------ o unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] > ith the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of he message - - - - - - - - - - Search for more Cambria County information on our webpage: http://www.camgenpa.com/ ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] ith the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of he message - - - - - - - - - - Search for more Cambria County information on our webpage: http://www.camgenpa.com/ ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] ith the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of he message