Author Discusses Article on Probate in the Old South

Alfred L. Brophy (professor of law, University of North Carolina) has posted a series of blogs discussing the article he co-authored with Stephen Duane Davis, II, which is entitled The Most Esteemed Act of My Life: Family, Property, Will, and Trust in the Antebellum South.  A list of the co-author’s postings with links is below.

• Antebellum Greene County: Discussing Greene County, Alabama, the country records that were the basis of the article.

• Probate in the Old South: Who?: Discussing the contents of the 110 wills that the authors sampled for the article. These wills were filed in Greene Country between 1813 and 1845.

• The New Technologies of the Antebellum Era: Steam and Trust: Discussing the prevalence of trusts in the wills surveyed.

• The Trusts for Freedom: Or How is Reese Witherspoon Related to Probate in the Old South?: Connecting Actress Reese Witherspoon to probate in the old south and discussing wills that attempted to free the slaves held by the testator.

The actual article is posted on SSRN, a link to which can be found on my prior blog post that also provides a summary of the article.

Special thanks to Joel Dobris (Professor of Law, UC Davis School of Law) for bringing these postings to my attention.