der@redrose.net wrote: > > Question here: If the child were 14 or over they got to choose their own > guardian, is that correct? Donna and all, Yes, that is correct, at least in theory. In this case I got the definite feeling that it had all been arranged in advance, since the same person was appointed for all six of them, but I have seen cases where different children chose different ones. > Also, I believe you are saying, then, that if a > child is choosing a guardian, the father being deceased, that it might be > a good time to check for a remarriage of the mother? Yes, if there is no other obvious reason for the choice of time to appoint one. It had to do with the fact that a widow had almost the same rights as a man, and she could act legally for her own children, but if she remarried she was not a widow anymore and they then needed a guardian. > (She didn't > necessarily get remarried, but is just a possibility to consider?) Yes. I know that Catherine Frank did not in fact remarry; that was not the reason in her case but I have definitely seen it in others. > I know > from my Dutch research that the Orphans Court in the Netherlands would > intervene when there was a second marriage - to make sure the children of > the first marriage were adequately taken care of. Is that the case in PA > during the 1700s and 1800s? I'm not sure it was so much to make sure they were adequately taken care of although that may have been a factor. As I said above, it had at least in part to do with the greater rights of widows than of married women. > If so, there are a lot of Orphans Court > records missing, so maybe I am answering my own question. :-) Right. A guardian was not appointed for the children every time a father died leaving minor children, if he also left a competent widow. I think that in practice anyway there had to be at least one other reason. > I also have > seen a father appointed as guardian of his children after the mother died. > Does that mean that *he* is getting remarried?, so once again time to > check for that remarriage? Well frankly I have no idea what that means. *His* remarriage would not ordinarily make any difference. I would suspect there may have been some sort of family dissention in that particular case and somebody wanted to intervene and take them over or something like that. Jan