Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 October 1875 — An Old New-Englander’s Will. [ARTICLE]

An Old New-Englander’s Will.

A well-known artist of San Francisco has on exhibition in his studio the copy of a curious will which deserves to be framed and hung up in the New England Kitchen. It was made by his grandfather, Silas Tappen, in 1782, and admitted to probate, although not without contest, in Salem, Mass., in 1787. Not drawn after the most approved model, the old gentleman’s hard common sense was manifest in it, and the law found no serious defect. After the usual “By the grace of God, I, Silas Tappen, being of sound mind, etc.,” he comes directly to the point: “ I bequeath to Betsy JEllen Pringle, daughter of Catharine Pringle—as I have had opportunity since my marriage with her to find out —my second wife, now living, my buckskin purse, together with one dollar in good and lawful money, the same to be given to her by my hereinafter-to-be-appointed executor as soon as the breath shall have left my body—the aforesaid lawful dollar as an equivalent for the peace and quiet brought into my house by her, and my purse as an object long admired by her and accorded to her tastes. To her sisters and aforementioned mother, and various other relatives, found by me after my- aforesaid marriage to have passed to me as part and parcel of my second wife, I do give and grant to them forever that right which I have never been disposed to deny them, of sojourning elsewhere than in my house and upon my providing ; and I do most devoutly pray, for the sake of any misguited.man deserving of sympathy, that before proposing marriage to the aforesaid sisters, or my wife, then widow, he shall have .become\ as demented as they. To my oldest son, John, who seems from his cradle to have endeavored to nullify any parental and final feeling which was natural between us by the means of an incessant and relentless Application of the fiddle and flute, I do bequeath the little which I have left of love for music, together with my fiddle, long since worn out by him, and do devise to him, subject to his step-mother’s right of dower, for which right the law, and not his father, is responsible, all of my right, title and interest in my homestead

at Salem, where at this date I do reside, together with everything real and personal and by way of easement to its belonging, to him and his heirs forever. To my other children, Samuel and Mary, I do bequeath all my personal property and assets, with the exceptions herein noted, after the payment of my debts, of which I have nene, save the’debt of nature, all in the amount, of money deposited in the bank at Salem and other chattels, of sß,ooo®f lawful money; and to my children I do devise and bequeath these things only upon one condition, viz.: that in respect to my memory they or any of them shall not injmy manner contribute to the support of Catherine Pringle or her daughters. In which event Ido direct my executor hereinafter mentioned to make over to the Massachusetts Insane Asylum every dollar and all property herein given to them.”

The testator finished by directing his executor to give, if there no objection offered by his heirs, certain things of small value to his friends, and then named as his executor the musical son. It was signed, sealed, witnessed and acknowledged in the most elaborate form, and, although contested by the widow on the ground that at the time this will was made the testator was insane, the jury decided that there was nothing unnatural in his ill-feeling toward his mother-in-law and family, and that he was competent to make a will.— San Francisco Bulletin.