Where There's A Will...

The prompt for week 9 of Amy Johnson Crow's 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge is "Where There's A Will...".  I struggled with this one for the past week (that's why I'm a day late in posting).  I don't know much about reading wills and the legal jargon.  The only will I knew of at the time was written by my 5th great grandfather in 1852.  

Nicholas Speak was born March 1782 in Charles County, Maryland.  In 1804, he married Sarah Faires.  They settled in Rose Hill, Lee County, Virginia and had 11 children together, seven sons and four daughters.  Nicholas was a pastor, who had donated one acre of land for a meeting house to be erected.  The meeting house later became the Speak s Chapel Methodist Episcopal Church.  Nicholas died in 1852, Sarah 13 years later in 1865. 

His will can be found on Ancestry.com and I have also received copies from a couple distant copies (thank you Dolores, Carol and Lola-Margaret).  The writing is sort of difficult to read but what I gathered from his will is that everything would be left to his wife if he passed before her as long as she remained a widow and did not remarry.  If she remarried she would be "endowed of my estate as though I had made no will".  At the death of his wife, 150 acres of land, including the mansion house and out buildings, were to go to his daughters, Fanny and Rebecca, and their heirs.  Another 150 acres was given to his sons, Samuel, John, and James and their several heirs.  To his son, Jesse and his heirs, he left 93 acres.  It was written that if Samuel, John and James could not agree upon lines of division for the 150 acres they inherited that the Court of Lee County appoint three commissioners to lay off lots as nearly equal in value, quality and quantity being considered and then the sons would need to decide ownership.  There was one condition upon the land he gave to his sons, they had to pay in a sum of $750 - from that money $150 was given to daughter Sarah (Speak) Bartley, $150 was given to the children of his deceased son Charles to be divided equally among them, $150 to his deceased son Joseph's heirs to be divided equally among them, and $150 to the heirs of his deceased son, Thomas, to be divided equally among them.  The will was written in 1852...I found it difficult to understand but I believe these were his wishes.

Nicholas and Sarah Speak's "mansion" house

Last night, while trying to work on this post, I started digging through a box I received from my uncle shortly before Christmas.  Inside I found the wills of both my grandfather, Roger Lewis, and my great grandmother, Dora Bartley.  These were much easier to understand - pay funeral expenses and any debt, the remainder to my grandmother or divided equally among my dad and brothers if my grandma passed first.  My great grandmother's was the same - pay funeral expenses and any debt, the remainder to be equally divided between my grandmother and her brother. 

While there wasn't a lot to be learned by finding the wills of my grandpa and great grandma, there were some other amazing finds in that box.  But those are for another day!!