Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Will of John Cathey--March 1837 Session--Lincoln Co NC

Read over some of the Lincoln Co. North Carolina probate records and found the will of John Cathey which was proved at the March 1837 Session of the Lincoln Co Court.  John listed all his children but apparently did not approve one of his daughter's choice of a husband.

4th I give and bequeath to my second daughter Jinny Mauney --one dollar

Later in the will he makes the following stipulation.  

also all my other property bequeathed to my wife at her decease to be equally divided among all of my children except my daughter Jenny Mauney.  it is my desire that she do not heir any of my estate until after the death of her husband Livingston Mauney.
You can find the complete will of John Cathey at the link below.

Will of John Cathey--March 1837 Session--Lincoln Co NC
"North Carolina, Probate Records, 1735-1970," images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1940-1191876-1-8?cc=1867501&wc=MDRK-FZ3:169766601,170758801 : accessed 27 May 2015), Lincoln > Wills, 1824-1838, Vol. 01 > image 466 of 489; county courthouses, North Carolina

Livingston Mauney and Abram Houser took out a marriage bond on August 21 1829 in Lincoln County, North Carolina for Livingston Mauney to marry Jane Cathey.

Livingston Mauney and Jane Cathey 21 August 1829 Lincoln Co NC  Abram Houser.
Ancestry.com. North Carolina, Marriage Records, 1741-2011 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015.

Original data: North Carolina County Registers of Deeds. Microfilm. Record Group 048. North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh, NC.

All records I could find showed the marriage as the same day as the bond.  While I am not sure that is accurate John Cathey's will proves that they must have married at least by the time of his writing the will and he was apparently not very fond of Livingston.  Livingston is thought to be the son of Dr. George Mauney Sr. even though he is not mentioned in George's will of 1840.  A check of the files at Ancestry and Rootsweb have Livingston's date of death as 16th November 1849 though I never found a source for that.  There are a lot of unanswered questions.  What caused John Cathey to not like Livingston?   What was the cause of death for Livingston?  Forties is fairly young to die..even back then.  What became of Jane "Jenny" Cathey Mauney?  Did she also die around that time?  Did she get her inheritance when her husband died if she was still living?  Now if I can just find info concerning one of my ancestors.




Monday, May 25, 2015

A Few Probate Packets of South Carolina Cook families

A hot topic of the Cook/Putman researchers lately has been trying to determine if the Cook and Putman families knew each other prior to their arrival in Williamson Co. TN.  The Putmans were in Union Co. SC.  With the rain today..it just made sense to use the time to see what Cook families I could find in the Union Co SC area.  I didn't find any obvious connection to my Cooks but I really enjoyed reading over them..

Several of these Cook families were Quaker Families.  The estate inventories provide a great deal of information about the deceased as well as listing the names of those who purchased items.  I enjoyed the beautiful writing on some of the pages.  If these don't interest you, go to the main FamilySearch site and find a state in which your ancestors lived and see what is available for the counties in which your families lived.

The SC Probate files at FamilySearch  aren't searchable however I found an index and then used that to navigate to the Cook images.  

Union Co SC


York Co SC 

While reading over the estate inventories, you might find tools with which you are unfamiliar.  There were several that I didn't recognize and too some that I just wanted to see.  There are several books at Google Books that will help identify tools.  I found The Illustrated Sheffield List to be very helpful and it is available free.  Most of the items that I was unfamiliar with had to do with horses.  In the inventory of Isaac Cook's estate there was a copy of Barkley's Apology as well as a Bible.

There are many State probate documents available at FamilySearch.  Most of the ones I have found aren't searchable but are browsable.  A great deal of these records have a  scanned index and once you find that you can use that to find the surnames of interests within the browsable probate documents.