Jun 25, 2024 - Sale 2674

Sale 2674 - Lot 66

Price Realized: $ 1,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
SIGNER READ, GEORGE. Autograph Letter Signed, "Geo:Read," to John Golden, explaining that language in the will sent by [John?] Dickinson discussing the status of a tract of land in St. Georges Hundred [in DE] is ambiguous between a fee simple estate and an estate tail, and enclosing copies of the summons in dower and the will [not present]. 3¼ pages, 4to, written on a folded sheet; faint dampstaining at lower edge throughout, minor loss to text from small holes at vertical fold ends, faint scattered foxing, docketing written inverted at lower edge of terminal page in unknown hand. New Castle, DE, 26 July 1786
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". . . I . . . rece'd a Letter from Mr. Dickinson inclosing a Copy of Nath. Williams' Will which I think is of the hand writing of The Rev'd Tim. Griffith dece'd who probably drew the original Will. . . . Upon perusing this Copy I find that altho' in the devise to Jacob Williams of the Land in St. Geo[rge]s Hundred an Estate in Fee Simple is then given--Yet in the last clause of the Will . . . he adds . . . . words . . . such as will restrain those used in the first Clause and turn that Estate which by the first Expressions would have given a Fee Simple Estate to Jacob the Son & devisee into an Estate Tail . . . .
"Thus you will discover how useful and important a thing it is for every Man seeking a Law Opinion to have it in his Power to give his Co[u]nsel a compleat & certain State of his Case so as to be answered truly & beneficially[. Y]ou may recollect my particularity as to y'r form of Expression in the Will so as to know certainly what the Nature of the Estate therein given to Jacob the Son was and had I taken it for granted according to y'r supposition that it was what is stiled in the Law, a Fee-Simple or absolute Estate I shou'd have given a quite opposite Opinion to wit that your Children wou'd be entitled to the St. Geo's Land af[orementione]d & you & they might have been induced to have commenced a Suit at Law & carried on the same at a considerable Expence . . . ."