Signs of Familial Discontent

 

Simon Rinehart's will was presented in court in Perry County, Ohio, on March 8, 1853. The document was so sparse of details—it didn't even provide his wife's name, though he bequeathed her the entirety of his possessions—that I thought perhaps the man had taken care of such business beforehand by recording deeds concerning land transactions for his many children.

How wrong I was.

It took a bit over a year for the signs of familial discontent to surface, but in a faded entry in an appearance docket in the spring of 1854, I found my first sign of just who thought they should have been named in their father's will.

The faded entry named Samuel Rinehart, Martha Fordyce, Jacob Fordyce, Mary Smith, Robert Smith, Thomas Rinehart, and Sarah Gordon. Below that listing of names appeared the words, "heirs of Simon Rinehart, deceased."

That wasn't the end of it. That list was followed by another similarly long list of names: Anna Rinehart, Nancy Ankrom, Jesse Rinehart, Lucinda Rinehart, Charlotte Rinehart, Cassa Brown, Isaac Brown, and Hannah Rinehart. The note continued, "also heirs of said Simon Rinehart, deceased."

In between those two groupings of names was a line with the entry, "vs."

The second group of names contained the explanation, which we've already gleaned from an entry in the 1850 census, that Anna—also listed later in the document as Ann—was the widow who had not been mentioned specifically by name in Simon's will. 

Fast forward to January of 1855. In a court document signed by the publisher of a local newspaper, we can see an example of the required insertion in the paper of record, notifying that same list of people that Thomas Rinehart had filed a petition against all of them, for the purpose of demanding partition of the land of the now long deceased Simon Rinehart. And fortunately for us, the newspaper clipping provided the land's precise location: the northwest quarter of section 15, of township 15, and range 15.

That demand was to be presented at the next term of the court of common pleas in Perry County. No matter how the case was eventually resolved, this was sure to provide me far more information on the composition of Simon Rinehart's large family than I had ever expected to learn. 

Image above: Not long after Simon Rinehart's heirs contended for his property, this plat map showed the location of the land—in this 1859 map, labeled as "S. Rhinehart's Hrs"—situated somewhat to the southeast of the town of New Lexington, Ohio, on the northwest quarter of section 15 in Pike Township; map courtesy of U.S. Library of Congress, in the public domain.