Catharine Womble's Petition for Dower, Nov. Court 1835

Almost a year ago, I finally got Catharine Womble’s dower petition from my local Family History Center.  It’s a pretty long file and I copied everything to my flash drive.  At the time, I contemplated transcribing it, but settled for copying the images to my computer and printing them out and putting them in my Womble Genealogy book, which is really just a huge binder filled with Family Group Sheets, copies of documents (some of which have been cited), and profiles on some of my ancestors.  I’ve spent a part of the weekend updating and uploading copies of documents onto ‘the cloud’ on WeRelate where I’ve started to put my genealogical research and transcription of Catharine Greene Womble’s dower petition. 

My goal is to put all of my research on WeRelate while still keeping a duplicate copy of everything in PAF5.  Some of the longer documents such as Catharine’s petition, court records, and land records I plan to transcribe and upload the document to the site.  Hopefully, that way anyone looking at my research will be able to easily read the document.

I’ve transcribed about 1 1/4 pages of Catharine Greene Womble's dower petition.  I can't figure out why Catharine waited so long to file this petition and essentially to settle her husband's estate 14 years after his death.  On the surface it looks as though Catharine is trying to protect her financial interests by taking her children to court over her dead husband's 75 acres of land that he owned at the time of his death.  I'm sure she isn't really angry with her children and that it's just the legalese of the court documents that makes it seem this way.  However, perhaps this reflects the modern day scenario of adult children influencing their elderly parents into selling the family home and either moving in with them or putting their parents in a retirement facility?

My theory about this family was always that there had to be some impetus for all of them to relocate to southwestern Tennessee around 1836.   At first I couldn’t figure it out, but believed that the answer had something to do with the eldest son, Doctor Warren Womble.  I may have written a post about this earlier, so forgive me if you’ve read about my theories in an earlier post. 

Last February, I received from Drew University’s library Warren’s obit from the Nov. 1842 edition of the Southwestern Christian Advocate.  The obit stated that he had become a minister and moved to Shelby County, Tennessee in 1836.  This information tallied with the 1840 US Census from Fayette County, Tennessee that showed him and a few of his family members living in the area and further suggested that his mother, Catharine was living in his household as a 70-80 year old female.  There’s also a letter in John Womble’s Rev. War pension file from Warren’s brother, Benjamin F. Womble to the US government requesting a survivor’s pension.  In the letter Benjamin states that his mother died 2 February 1843 in Fayette County, Tennessee.

Land records that I obtained from my local FHC that date from the mid-1830’s suggest that once Catharine received her dower that she may have been unable to pay the taxes on the property.  This seems to have led to a sheriff’s sale of the property she received in her dower petition.  I feel strongly that Catharine losing her land and her son, Warren’s minister job in Shelby County, Tennessee would have been enough motivation for her and some of the other family members to clear out of Edgecombe County to make a new life for themselves out west.  Of course, I need to read each of these records and should transcribe them as I go in order to fully grasp the entire situation.