In a message dated 12/5/2003 5:19:04 AM Pacific Standard Time, [email protected] writes: > Janet, this is another one of those "bugaboos" that's hard to decipher. A > person was considered an "orphan" if their father was dead, but their mother > was > still living. Therefore, they were appointed(or they could choose after a > certain age) a male guardian. Your ancestor's guardian was probably her > step > father, and he may have received an allowance from her deceased father's > estate > to help support her. And he may not have been legally entitled to it until > after 1814. ???? It's anybody's guess. > > B. MacKie > Thank you so much for your response! Elizabeth's Landing guardian was John Vann from the get-go. I believe Vann was named because she had a significant estate (land and $$ and a woman slave who eventually bore four children), and in such cases a third-party is named to protect the orphans interests from evil stepfathers, etc., etc. Vann was not named until AFTER her mother remarried. I have all of those court records. What I didn't mention earlier is that while the Landings lived in Gates County NC, Elizabeth's husband Michael Marsh and her guardian John Vann lived in neighboring Hertford Co., the records for which were burned by a fire caused by a carpenter building new bookshelves in the courthouse after the Civil War! Thanks again, Janet