Hello Everyone, Also this weekend we were discussing entailment/sales of land/slaves on the Lower-Delmarva Roots list which includes Accomac and Northhampton. I am inserting below two paragraphs that appeared in a post there that parallels what we have discussed, but wanted to highlight up front a notable, enjoyable quote on language from wills emphasizing the testator's "command" for the land to stay in the family: "the best wording of entail that Les and I have seen so far comes in two wills, one in which the testator stated the land to be his sons until fire no longer burns wood, water no longer quenches thirst and time is no more--or the one in Caroline County where the testator stated that his son was to have the land until the tide on the Choptank no longer ebbed or flowed" (Posted by Neil Eddie, one or the LDR list's resident historians, Co-owner of the Family Tree Bookshop, which used to have a store in Easton, MD, some of you may know, but now operates via www.familytreebookshop.com) <Larger Insert> Most of those "swells" as you so beautifully phrased it that came over here were the younger offspring of aristocratic families, either coming over here to live on land that was purchased for them, or to "manage" the estate for the family. There is a good study by Martin Quit in the William and Mary Quarterly from a few years back that indicates most of those coming over here were alienated from the old notions of primogeniture and did engage in partible inheritance (there are other reasons for this as well--particularly with regard to Virginia). Although they did away with primogeniture, the wills are full of examples of entailing the lands left to the sons and daughters either forbidding them to sell the land outside of the family, or laying out the proper descent of the testator's lands (thus you get those marvelous wills where they say and "should Leaven die without heirs and before coming of age then the land left to him to be the property of George and should George die without issue before coming of age, then to Thomas, etc.--the best wording of entail that Les and I have seen so far comes in two wills, one in which the testator stated the land to be his sons until fire no longer burns wood, water no longer quenches thirst and time is no more--or the one in Caroline County where the testator stated that his son was to have the land until the tide on the Choptank no longer ebbed orflowed). So, entail of land or real estate was practiced widely, and the land record show the number of instances when a son attempted to break it--it will be in an indenture titled something like "for the barring and docking of estate intail"--this all revolved around a rather complicated court process where the son would sell the land and the case would go to the Chancery court where a"common recovery" was made. <End Insert> Best Regards, Janet (Baugh) Hunter