Big inheritance by farmer's daughters in 1858.

montgo

In 1858, according to a cousin's Irish will (assets c£500) left his farm (c90acres), divided between 2 of his sons. Additionally, he bequeathed £200 each to 3 daughters - to be "levied & raised" from the farm before the sons took possession.

Would it not be a huge sum of money to raise back then? Would it be more likely that the money was not paid until the sisters got married?

Tks

pedroeibar1

montgo wrote: »

In 1858, according to a cousin's Irish will (assets c£500) left his farm (c90acres), divided between 2 of his sons. Additionally, he bequeathed £200 each to 3 daughters - to be "levied & raised" from the farm before the sons took possession.

Would it not be a huge sum of money to raise back then? Would it be more likely that the money was not paid until the sisters got married?

Tks

Firstly, the value of £500 – it was a large sum, and by today’s values it was worth on average about £750k or euro 1 million. (Complicated because you need to understand the ‘time value of money’.)

Prices - land was selling to tenant farmers under the land acts at about £9-10 per acre on average for good land; poor land was about £7 per acre.

If the assets for probate amounted to £500 the value of the farm would be included (unless he was a co-owner, when his share would be included). By making ‘possession’ (i.e. legal ownership) conditional on payment of the sums to the daughters is a good method of ensuring they got paid. In one 18th century line of my family there was a court case over exactly this type of event – the relative’s wife did not receive her dowry from her brother when their father died. The relative contended that the son never obtained title to the lands in question because he did not fulfil the pre-condition of giving money to his sisters in accordance with their father’s will and as a result title passed to them. (I picked it up in a newspaper advert, in a notice disputing an attempted sale by the assignee of the bankrupt son.)

FWIW it would have been more ‘common’ to leave the farm to the eldest son rather than split it and then have the younger siblings receive cash amounts, to be paid by the inheritor of the farm. Daughters usually got a raw deal in terms of value, - if young and unmarried they would get an amount for a dowry or if older with no marital expectation they could be given a right of residence in the home or a larger amount go off and live elsewhere.

Your cousin appears to have been very well disposed towards his daughters if one looks at it from a purely financial standpoint.

tabbey

It was very common for a testator to make provision for other members of the family, at the expense of the main beneficiary.

Many wills specified annual payments to various daughters or to pay somebody's school or college fees, etc. This was fine when rents were being collected on an estate, during good economic times. When times were bad, such as during the land war of the 1880s, the guy who inherited the estate had no money to pay his obligations.

This was one of the reasons why the various governments introduced land acts between 1881 and 1903.

pedroeibar1

tabbey wrote: »

It was very common for a testator to make provision for other members of the family, at the expense of the main beneficiary.

Many wills specified annual payments to various daughters or to pay somebody's school or college fees, etc. This was fine when rents were being collected on an estate, during good economic times. When times were bad, such as during the land war of the 1880s, the guy who inherited the estate had no money to pay his obligations.

This was one of the reasons why the various governments introduced land acts between 1881 and 1903.

Agree with most of that Tabbey but for the sake of clarity – the first of the Land Acts was the Landlord & Tenant (Ireland) Act 1870. The problem of debt-ridden estates was initially dealt with by the Encumbered Estates Court, set up post-Famine by legislation in 1849. Its work was subsumed into the Landed Estates Court (1858) which in turn became the Land Commission under the Land Law (Ireland) Act 1881 (known generally as the Second Land Act.) The few estates I've looked at were in trouble long before the Famine, mainly due to inability and mismanagement fuelled by absenteeism.