Tuesday 20th October 2009 - The Widow's Mite

         The courthouse in Lisbon has a splendid Victorian gentlemen's room in the basement.  It is made entirely out of white ceramic bricks.  The urinals have been modernised, but no doubt the originals had spendid glass splash panels, held in place by brass fittings.  It's the sort of thing that makes a chap feel pampered.  And it's somewhere to escape the nests of Grown-up ladies.  It only lacks an elderly man in a white jacket with a clothes brush, but I expect it used to have one of them too. 

          Next door is the Sheriff's department, equiped with its very own nest.   They are very keen to help me add Columbiana County to my collection of arm patches.  They have an extensive collection of their own, all over the office.  I didn't dare ask how they had acquired them.

 

          I have added another stop to my forays round town.  I'm now visiting the town museum, which is the old railroad depot (I'm not sure why they call it that, since the old maps say it was on the Pitsburg and Chicago Railway).  But that is where all the probate records are now stored.  When I went into the probate department, and told them what I was after, they  asked if I was the man who had been talking to the judge a few nights before.  My fame goes before me!

          Anyway, I get to see the papers for poor old John McBean's demise.  These original old papers (well, copies actually, but probably contemporaneous) have their own excitment to them.  He did not, of course, make a will, so they have to appoint administrators to organise it all.  He is clearly in debt.  He seems to have died in the winter.  I expect farmers paid their bills at harvest time.  They make an inventory of his possessions, which is fascinating, and they list everything the Widow takes.  Among a lot of other things, mostly utensils, but including a couple of sheep, she takes five cups, saucers, and plates.  I wonder whether that was because it started out as six, and one lot got broken, or if there were four children.  In any case, it definitely has "Hearts and Flowers" playing in the background.

          One of the files is completely empty.  These historians are a bad (or maybe just careless) lot.

          I'm trying to find out what subsequently became of her when I have a bit of luck. Looking at another transfer deed, back in the courthouse, I find her popping up with a new name.  Actually, she pops up as the wife of somebody else, with the new name given as "Alias".  I can't resist chasing after the marriage, to see how long it was after the death, and it turned out, round at the archives, to be a decent four years.

          But, back at the courthouse, she and the new husband immediately sold off the land for the exact same sum she paid for it to the administrators four years before.  And eighteen years after that, another McBean buys it.  One gets a sense of a community and family guiding some things along.

 

          Later that night, someeone at the bar asks if I'm the man visiting the Glasgows.  He shows me, on his iphone/blackberry, a web site where someone is talking of doing just that, and asks if it's me.  But this is some youngster talking about doing it more than three years ago.  I wonder if he did it.  I have found his email address and asked him.