{"id":14797,"date":"2018-01-30T07:00:35","date_gmt":"2018-01-30T07:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/?p=14797"},"modified":"2022-02-24T01:34:23","modified_gmt":"2022-02-24T01:34:23","slug":"how-i-solved-it-my-four-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/how-i-solved-it-my-four-children\/","title":{"rendered":"How I Solved It: My Four Children"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Child\"\"<\/a>, blog author and longtime member of the New England Historic Genealogical Society<\/a>, has shared this blog as part of our ongoing \u201cHow I Solved It Series\u201d.<\/p>\n

Chris’s blog explains how his ancestor had a second family no one knew about. DNA helped find him after he’d left the first family and identified the second family. Interesting statements in the will lead to some speculation about what would happen if both families knew about each other.<\/span><\/p>\n

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I have an entertaining update on my mysterious great-great-great-grandfather John A. Through alias True (1835\u20131912). In my recent post<\/a> on this family, I discovered (with the help of DNA) his second later family, his slightly changed name, four additional children (a son John by each wife) \u2013 and wondered whether each of the four children he had by his two wives ever knew each other.<\/p>\n

John A. True died at Fostoria, Ohio 14 January 1912 and in the index of Seneca County, Ohio Probate Records on Ancestry.com, I found that he did indeed leave a will. The year 1912 was just recent enough that I still had to write to the courthouse for copies, and I recently received John\u2019s probate in the mail.<\/span> By and large, this is a fairly ordinary probate for a person of moderate means. When it came to his will, he provided specifically for a grandson, Glenn N. True, the son of John\u2019s son Frank True, and if that grandson died the specific bequest went to Glenn\u2019s father Frank. John left his wife Mary all of the household furnishings. Then, when it came to the rest, he left the following item:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Interesting. My four children (unnamed). I think it\u2019s fair to state the implication was the four children by his second wife, as they are listed later in a summary of heirs, as \u201chis only next of kin, to-wit\u201d:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Except this quartet is not his only next of kin. John had four other children by his first wife; in 1912, they were alive and well and living in Philadelphia. I think it\u2019s also safe to assume that John\u2019s two families did not know (much if anything about) each other.<\/p>\n

[When] you encounter ancestors who may have secret, earlier, or later families, you should not expect their probate documents to be specific or make complete sense.<\/h3>\n

So, to the entertaining part of this. Since John left the rest of his property to his \u201cfour children\u201d and did not name them, what does that mean from a legal standpoint? He actually had eight children. Had these four older children known of their estranged father\u2019s death, could they have claimed something? I have no legal training, and am unfamiliar with the laws of Ohio in 1912, but let\u2019s just have a little fun with this. Below is a chart outlining the descendants of John down to my father and his sister, indicating other children along the way who also have descendants.<\/p>\n

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Click on the image to expand it.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The amount of John\u2019s residuary estate was $1,525.75. If this is divided in equal eighths (rather than equal fourths), you get $190.71. From there divide this in two, then in fifths, and then again in half \u2026 and my father and his sister can each get a lovely inheritance of $9.53! (Adjusted for inflation, that\u2019s $238.04, and who knows how much more if invested!)<\/p>\n

Obviously all of this is absurd. I\u2019m sure there are plenty of statutes of limitations for heirs filing such silly claims, but it does bring up the point that when you encounter ancestors who may have secret, earlier, or later families, you should not expect their probate documents to be specific or to make complete sense. Had John\u2019s earlier children known of their estranged father\u2019s death, this could have been an interesting court case. But the older children apparently did not know or did not care.<\/p>\n

As one of my father\u2019s three children, I still want my three dollars!<\/p>\n

If you have a story idea or a blog that you\u2019d like to share as part of this series, please let us know about it in the comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris Child, blog author and longtime member of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, has shared this blog as part of our ongoing \u201cHow I Solved It Series\u201d. Chris’s blog explains how his ancestor had a second family no one knew about. DNA helped find him after he’d left the first family and identified the second…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":14889,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,12,1],"tags":[17,22,34,35,14],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/How-I-solved-it-Blog-Featured-imageChrisChilds-My-Four-Children.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14797"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14797"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16051,"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14797\/revisions\/16051"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}