William Strother and Joseph Kirkland, executors of William Kirkland's will, ask that the testator's three minor children set forth "true full and perfect answers" regarding the execution of their late father's will. The petitioners remind the court that they filed a bill on 15 June 1811 wherein they prayed "your Honors to authorize them to vary the mode of administering the said Estate, but the prayer was rejected." Reporting that he did "dispose of the whole of the provisions on the said Plantation, sold the stock of horses and other articles ... and hired out the Negroes & rented the Lands," Joseph Kirkland declares that he "is well convinced that what he has done is most certainly for the best Interest of the said Minor children." In fact, he surmises that, "at the time of their arriving at the age of twenty one," the estate will be "worth considerably more than it would by pursuing the Will." The petitioners, in order to indemnify their actions, pray that twelve-year-old Mary Honor, ten-year-old John De Bell, and eight-year-old Martha Maria be compelled to answer "whether it will not be most to their advantage that the plan prescribed in the said Will for managing the said Estate should be varied and departed from" and "why the said Sale and hire of the negroes and Rent of the Land should not be sanctioned by this Honorable Court."
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Repository: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, South Carolina
