The Estate of Samuel Whittington: Gotta Love Those Court Cases

When Samuel Whittington died in Calvert County MD in 1806, he had no children and left no will.  So to ordinarily, he wouldn't be of much interest to a family historian.  But in Samuel's case, the ultimate settlement of his estate, some twenty years later, resulted in a Chancery Court case that laid out several generations of the Whittington family, a veritable gold mine of genealogical information.

By plotting out the complex explanation of Samuel's heirs, I was able to trace an extended family tree for the Whittingtons of Calvert and Anne Arundel Counties.  And, because a couple of his heirs were involved in other suits, I could make even more connections between the Whittingtons and the Woods family, in the process finding a solution to a long-standing brick wall.

In 1827, when the court case was filed, Samuel's three brothers, William, Francis and James had all died intestate as had his sisters, Elizabeth and Rebecca, both of whom were married to men named Turner.

His sisters Lavinia (who married William Stevens) and Araminta (the widow of James Wood) were still living.

Because all these heirs were dead, the plaintiffs needed to name all the heirs of the heirs.  Genealogical Heaven!

William Whittington's heirs (all of age in1827) were Clement, John S., Rachel (who married Washington Green Tuck) and Mary.  The fact that there were all over 21 allows me to calculate some parameters for their birth dates: the children of William Whittington were all born before 1806.

The heirs of James Whittington were:
Eleanor who married William P. Hardesty (died intestate before 1827)
Elizabeth who married John Ward (died intestate before 1827)

Eleanor Hardesty's heirs (all infants under the age of 21) were:
John James Hardesty
William Thomas Hardesty
Joseph Henry Hardesty
Mary Ann Elizabeth Hardesty
Susan Rebecca Hardesty

The heirs of Francis Whittington were:
Francis
Charles (died by 1827, left children Maria, Ellen, Lewis and Sarah Ann, all infants)
Elizabeth Wood (died intestate by 1827, left a daughter Eleanor Wood, an infant of Baltimore MD)
Samuel
Ann
Eleanor
William (died by 1827, left daughter Drusilla)

The heirs of Rebecca Turner were:
Elizabeth who married John Hollingshead
Eleanor who married John Winfield
Mary who married Mr. Dalrymple (both of whom are dead by 1827, leaving as heirs Eleanor Gibson, John Dalrymple and William Dalrymple)

The heirs of Elizabeth Turner were:
William
Thomas who was dead by 1827 leaving Elizabeth, Richard, John, Mary Ann, Thomas and Ann as his heirs. 
Richard
Sarah who married Joseph Griffith
Wilhelmina who married Clement Chaney
Rebecca who married William Howard.  Rebecca was dead by 1827 leaving as heirs Elizabeth who married James Forsyth, Rebecca who married Walter Crosby, Peggy who married James Cox, Eleanor who married Mr. Gibson, Mary, the widow of Mr. Dew, Sally, Matilda and Willy Ann and infants  Mahala and Sophia.

See what I mean?  A gold mine.  And reading through all the documents in the original case file led to many more details of marriages and deaths.  After that, a search of marriage records and census records allowed me to fill in details for at least some of these folks.

Ultimately, I was able to show that the Samuel Whittington shown above as the son of Francis Whittington, was the same person who married Dorothy Wood and whose father I had been searching for for quite a while.

Overall, Chancery Court cases like this are worth reading through every last page and making very careful notes because they are full of information.

The document below shows the distribution of Samuel Whittington's estate in 1827.