When speling wazn’t standerd
Reader Austin Gray is struggling with a document from the Laurens District of South Carolina from the early 1800s where one of his ancestors relinquishes her right of dower in a piece of property being sold by her husband.
The hitch: so many of the words in the relinquishment are consistently spelled in ways that are just plain weird.
The Legal Genealogist can’t say the spelling is consistently wrong, because spelling didn’t even begin to be truly standardized in what became the United States until after the Revolution — and it didn’t happen overnight.1
But weird? Oh yes.
And the weirdness starts right at the beginning with the place where the event occurred — Newberry District, South Carolina — and the man who took the relinquishment, a fellow by the name of Providence Williams.
Now let’s back up a second and set the scene.
William Gray, husband of Sarah Gray, wanted to sell a 109-acre tract of land in Laurens District to Abraham Gray for $100. He executed a deed to Abraham for the land on 20 December 1812.2 But there was a hitch in transferring clear title: in South Carolina, as in most areas of the United States, William’s wife Sarah had potential dower rights in that land.
Dower, of course, was the right of a widow to live on and profit from a portion of her husband’s lands on his death.3
But, you say, William was alive, so Sarah didn’t have any rights yet, right?
Almost right.
You see, if Sarah didn’t agree to the sale, then after William’s death she could go to court and try to claim dower in the land William sold. Abraham’s title to the land would have to be fought out then.
And buyers didn’t like the idea of having to fight with widows years later.
So South Carolina law set up a procedure for the wife of a land seller to come before a judge or justice, privately and away from her husband, to say she agreed with the sale — and that ended her ability to claim dower in that land forever.4
And that’s what Sarah was doing. On the 27th of January 1813, she was being questioned near her home in the Newberry District by Providence Williams about whether she agreed to the sale and the giving up of her dower interest so that Abraham Gray would have clear title.5
But oh boy… about that spelling.
Now in fairness it isn’t clear whether the spelling was that of Providence Williams, and copied faithfully by John Garlington, the register of mesne conveyances for Laurens District, when he added it to the deed book in 1815, or whether it originated with Garlington. (The register of mesne conveyances, by the way, was the old name for the Register of Deeds in South Carolina. The name was changed by statute as of 1 January 1998, but any existing official using that title then was grandfathered in until he or she left office.6)
But oh boy… whoever did it has a lot to answer for.
Because you can’t even get into the document without seeing Newberry spelled as “Nubary.” And right after naming Providence Williams, you run into the word “Jestes.” In context, it’s crystal clear that Justice is meant, because the full reference is to Williams as “one of the Jestes of the quorum” — and Providence Williams was indeed a Justice of the Quorum for Newberry District.7
That, by the way, was a kind of senior justice of the peace, without whom the other justices couldn’t act on matters of significance.8
And it goes on from there. Hereby becomes “heareby.” Certify is “sartify.” Whom is “home.” Concern turns into “consarne.” Even Sarah is spelled as “Saray” — which is exactly the way that name is pronounced in that area even today.
So many words have weird spellings in this document that it’d be really really hard to read.
Except for one thing.
South Carolina law set out a recommended form. And you can read that and compare the document… and get most if not all of the words right:
I, F. G. one of the judges of __________ (or justice of the quorum, as the case may be,) do hereby certify unto all whom it may concern, that E. B. the wife of the within named A.B. did, this day, appear before me, and upon being privately and separately examined by me, did declare that she does freely, voluntarily, and without any compulsion, dread or fear of any person or persons whomsoever, renounce, release, and for ever relinquish unto the within named C. D. his heirs and assigns, all her interest and estate, and also all her right and claim of dower, of, in or to all and singular the premises within mentioned and released.9
In the handwritten version, the hand of the law renders Austin’s document very hard to read. But when we find that published printed version, the hand of the law fills in the blanks.
Even when the speling wazn’t standerd…
Cite/link to this post: Judy G. Russell, “In the hand of the law,” The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : posted 30 Jan 2020).
SOURCES
- See Ellen Holmes Pearson, “The Standardization of American English,” teachinghistory.org (https://teachinghistory.org/ : accessed 30 Jan 2020). ↩
- Laurens County, SC, Deed Book K: 99-100, Gray to Gray (1812); digital images, “Laurens County, South Carolina deeds, 1785-1906,” FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org : accessed 30 Jan 2020). ↩
- See Henry Campbell Black, A Dictionary of Law (St. Paul, Minn. : West, 1891), 393, “dower.” ↩
- See §§ 25-26, Title 179: “Women,” in Joseph Brevard, An Alphabetical Digest of the Public Statute Law of South-Carolina, 3 vols. (Charleston, SC: John Hoff), 2: 350; digital images, Google Books (https://books.google.com/ : accessed 30 Jan 2020). ↩
- Laurens County, SC, Deed Book K: 100, Sarah Gray relinquishment of dower (1813). ↩
- See Caitlin Byrd, “That quirky name is gone from Charleston County’s deeds office,” The Post and Courier, posted 2 Jan 2018 (https://www.postandcourier.com : accessed 30 Jan 2020). ↩
- Acts and Joint Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina … 1810 (Columbus SC: State Printers, 1811), 114; digital images, HathiTrust Digital Library (https://www.hathitrust.org/ : accessed 30 Jan 2020). ↩
- See Giles Jacob, A New Law Dictionary (London : Nutt & Gosling, 1729), alphabetically organized and unpaginated, “Justice of the Peace” and “Quorum.” ↩
- § 26, Title 179: “Women,” in Brevard, An Alphabetical Digest of the Public Statute Law of South-Carolina, 2: 350. ↩
I came across an 1839 Republic of Texas will with strange spellings due to the clerk’s problem with the Latin in the will. Why would a will from that era have over a dozen Latin phrases in it? The will appears unremarkable otherwise and the testator was a planter not a lawyer.
This is a very helpful writeup on probate issues.
Most likely because early Texas had roots in the Civil Law, a very different legal system drawn from Roman law. Using Latin would have been part and parcel of that legal tradition. Even if the testator was a planter, he was likely guided by a lawyer, a notary or even a priest.
Thank you. This has been an interesting problem. I know other wills from Robertson county Republic of Texas need to be examined to see if Latin is common in other wills.
There were no priests in that area of the Republic. A lawyer would be well known and documented as part of the Texas War for Independence. A notary is something I did not think of. The testator came from Tennessee just before the Alamo. Will have to look into notaries.
I doubt that it’s possible to identify every priest or every person with legal training (even clerks) at that time. And you cannot understand Texas law at that time or even into early statehood without understanding the role of the notary.
The lawyer or notary could be in San Felipe de Austin or Nacogdoches. Robertson county is distant from towns. I lived in Texas for years and you are so right about the notary or notario. They are still important in Mexican society.
In defense of John Garlington, I have not seen these kind of spelling variations before, so I vote for Providence Wliiams 🙂
You would know!!! I accept your vote. (And I looked at nearby pages as well and didn’t see these kinds of things by Garlington either.)
As I was reading Judy’s comment about Garlington, the first thought that occurred to me was, LaBrenda would know! I spent a considerable part of my life in the 1980s in the old Laurens County Courthouse among these records, and even though I have forgotten nearly everything I knew then, I think I would remember if documents such as this one were typical. I wonder if the Clerk felt that it was best to record the document exactly as received, rather than to correct a perceived or actual misspelling. In essence, he was creating a transcription, and I suspect that we see the words exactly as he did.
There’s also a pretty big mismatch between the spelling of this relinquishment and all the other records in nearby pages, John — so I’m gonna vote with LaBrenda and place the blame (or credit!) on Providence Williams.
Judy, your blog is not loading from the email notices I receive — neither yesterday nor today. I know how to work around but some may not and we don’t want to miss a word of wisdom!
Two of the three links DO work, and the ones at the bottom to “web version” and “Cite/link to this post” should be used for now. (I’ve raised the question of why the link to the post title isn’t work with the mail service.)
I love to find documents such as these, because they reveal the person’s voice. Of course, it makes life easier for the researcher when things are spelled as we expect them to be, but I can “hear” the person (either the subject or the scribe) speaking to me when I read “sartify” and “consarne.”
Ain’t that the truth…