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Wills can be full of surprises

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  • Originally published July 12, 2008 at 1:08 a.m., updated July 12, 2008 at 1:08 a.m.

When teaching a genealogy course, I always encourage researchers to save, review and share.

Save: Do not throw away anything related to your genealogy. Keep all those bits of paper, newspaper clippings, letters and envelopes that do not seem to have any significance at this time in an expandable folder or box. One of these days you may find a little scribble on a scrap of paper is the very clue you need to unlock a new door in your family history research.

Review: “Re-look” at your records. Reread your copied documents, research notes, and family group sheets because you may find something you overlooked or more likely, something you had forgotten. When genealogists research more than one family, not only do they sometimes get family members confused, they even mix up one family’s events with another. Our minds play tricks on us and that is why verifiable records are essential to family history research.

Share: Others who are researching your same surname will be delighted to receive your information. Do not keep your findings close to your chest. Genealogy is meant to be shared and enjoyed by families, not kept in a locked box only to be unlatched after you have left this world.

CASE IN POINT

Review: Recently I applied for a Former Texas Ranger Memorial Cross for my ancestor, Absalom Jett, from Orange, Texas. In the Jett family folder, I found a copy of Absolom’s last will and testament. It had been many years since I looked at it, so I carefully began to decipher the handwritten document and found that everything was to be inherited by his wife and young son. This was his second wife, a woman he married after he was 60 following the death of his first wife. The will did not mention anything about his other six children which I found a bit strange. I then delved a bit deeper into my stash and found that his eldest son, John, contested the will following his father’s death, but was overruled by the court. In addition, the second wife was made executrix of the estate. Next I checked the dates of the second marriage, the writing of the will, and death of my ancestor. They were all within three years of each other. Hmmmm. The plot thickens. Now I must check issues of the Orange Leader for this time period that possibly mention troubles in the Jett family or at least court proceedings. This requires a trip to Austin to the Center for American Studies (Barker Library), an excellent repository of early Texas newspapers. You can see how this clue pointed to a new trail I earlier had overlooked.

Share: After making this discovery, I went online to Rootsweb.com, contacted a fellow Jett researcher and sent her an e-mail listing what I had located, including my reference notes. She quickly replied and was elated to receive this information she did not know existed and is adding it to her research. She thanked me for sharing my findings, which made me feel good knowing I had not kept the information to myself, but had shared it with a distant cousin.

Happy researching.

Mail query, along with a self-addressed, stamped envelope for a reply to: Relatively Speaking, c/o Victoria Advocate, P.O. Box 1518, Victoria, TX 77902. VCGS members will research queries requiring extensive study.



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