Piecing Together the Estate

 

When an ancestor dies intestate, the only option for those of us seeking to research his family line is to follow the details as his estate is liquidated. Granted, hundred year old inventories of belongings can make for boring reading, but if we learn to read between the lines, we can sometimes infer points about who is related to the deceased, based on their interest in what becomes of his estate.

In the case of Benjamin Townsend—whom I'm following because I suspect he was a brother of my third great-grandmother Delaney Townsend Charles—I already had an idea of the names of his immediate family members from the 1870 census. That document had revealed the likelihood that Benjamin's wife Jane, whom he had married in 1841, had long since died, since the wife named in 1870 was Martha, apparent mother of the two youngest children in the census: three year old David and baby George.

As of that 1870 census, likely children from the previous marriage (or possibly more than one) included sons Charles, Benjamin, Patrick, Light, and Joseph, as well as daughter Jane. Yet, by 1872, when William Sears was appointed as administrator of Benjamin's estate and drew up the inventory of the Townsend holdings, the paltry amount remaining was itemized and proceeds distributed to the then-remaining children.

That process was completed three years after Benjamin's passing. Named in that second step (in order listed in the probate records) were his children Benjamin, Light, Jane, and Joseph, as well as minor child David. 

At this point, a confusing entry mentions minor "Charles Townsend, child." That line was followed by writing which was subsequently crossed out. The document continues with an explanation that someone named James Townsend was paid out of the proceeds of the estate "for the child of Charles Townsend, deceased, to buy cloes [sic] for the little minor which were its share of its father's state."

This, of course, brings up several questions. First, what happened to Benjamin's son Charles? When did he die? Who was his wife and mother of this child? But most of all, who was James Townsend, and why was he paid the money for Charles' orphaned child?

While questions such as these pull us farther and farther away from my stated research goal for this month—to find documentation of the parents of my third great-grandmother Delaney Townsend—searching for these subsequent answers may eventually lead us to a collateral line whose documentation may provide the linch pin linking all these Florida Townsends together, and point us back to their true South Carolina origin.