Ohio, Wyandot County Probate Court, "Complete records 1897-1902 vol 10-11", volume 11 pages 130-137 — the whole recorded cause of George W. Pennington, administrator of the estate of John Cooper, deceased, v. Benjamin Cooper et al.: the petition to sell real estate filed 24 November 1900, the summons and sworn return of service, the legal notice, the guardian ad litem's answer, the order to advertise and sell, the report of sale and the confirmation with distribution order; together with the Wyandot general estate index volume 3 page 51, the index row for the same estate (case 2133, box 133). FamilySearch DGS 5876851 images 440-443 and DGS 5871538 image 44.

What this document records

The index row verbatim

Wyandot General and Judgment Index, volume 3, page 51 (the same printed form as [A.190]/[A.191], whose key table again gives Co = page 50): | printed column | value | |---|---| | Surname / Given | Cooper · John | | Administrator | G. W. Pennington | | capacity | Admr. | | Number of Case | Bx 133 · Case 2,133 | | Nature of Case | Appointment · Inventory · Real Estate · Final Account | | Docket | 1 457 (appointment) · 1 72[?] (real estate) | | Date of Final Order | May 13, 1901 | | JOURNAL | 11 / 479 | | RECORD | 3 / 208 · 13 / 119 · 11 / 130 — and 26 / 429 against the final account | "Real Estate → Record 11 p. 130" is what produced this entry, and it proved exact: the petition is at Complete Records vol 11 p. 130.

The caption and parties verbatim

Complete Record vol 11 p. 130 — every defendant name crop-verified at ~3.3×: "Be it Remembered, That Heretofore, To wit: On the 24th day of November A.D. 1900, The Plaintiff George W. Pennington, Administrator of the Estate of John Cooper, deceased, filed in the office of the Probate Court of Wyandot County, Ohio, his petition, praying for an order to sell Real Estate, which petition is in the words and figures following, to wit: In the Probate Court of Wyandot County, Ohio. · George W. Pennington, Administrator of the Estate of John Cooper, deceased. Plaintiff · — vs — · **Said Benjamin Cooper, Alice Cooper, Mary Ogden & Mary Cooper, Edith Cooper, Jennie Cooper and Ethel Cooper, minors, under fourteen years of age. Defendants · Petition to Sell Real Estate."

The property locks the identification

"Said John Cooper died seized in fee simple of the following real Estate, situate in the County of Wyandot, and State of Ohio, to wit: Being known as Lot No. Seven (7), in the Village of Mexico, County and State aforesaid." [K.103] records a John Cooper buying lot 7 Mexico from Nicholas McCullough on 23 January 1846 (1/304), and [K.102] records the administrator conveying lot 7 Mexico to Mary Ogden on 4 April 1901 (65/344). ⇒ one lot, held from 1846 to his death, sold out of his estate — a 53-year holding and the spine of John Cooper's whole land record. The estate was poor. "There is no personal estate, the property of said decedent, to pay said debts", the cost of administration "about Fifty Dollars", and the real estate appraised at $100.00. [desc], read at ~0.9×. It explains why a sale was needed at all: a $100 town lot was the entire estate.

What the no widow clause settles

"And there is no widow living, entitled to dower in said premises." [desc], read at ~0.9× and wanting crop-verification, but the clause is formulaic and unmistakable at that scale. ⇒ "Mary Cooper" among the defendants is NOT John's widow. Recorded because the opposite reading is the natural first guess and was in fact entertained while reading — a widow is a necessary party to a land sale for her dower, so a "Mary Cooper" in the caption invites it. The document refutes it in terms. And it bears on Mary Ellen (Wolverton) Cooper Mary Ellen (Wolverton) Cooper, whom the catalog holds as his wife: if this is the same man, she predeceased him (or the marriage had ended) before November 1900. Which is a constraint, not a date.

The summons names four minors not three

A CORRECTION TO THE FIRST READING OF THE CAPTION, MADE BY THE SUMMONS ON THE NEXT PAGE. The caption reads "… Mary Ogden & Mary Cooper, Edith Cooper, Jennie Cooper and Ethel Cooper, minors, under fourteen years of age", and the natural reading is that the minority clause governs the last three. The summons settles it, by listing them: "You are hereby commanded to notify Mary Cooper, Edith Cooper, Jennie Cooper, and Ethel Cooper, who are under the age of fourteen years". ⇒ FOUR minors, and Mary Cooper is one of them. Which independently kills the widow reading — a "Mary Cooper" in a land-sale caption invites it, because a widow is a necessary party for dower. Two passages refute it: this one, and the petition's own "there is no widow living". The transferable point: a caption's trailing descriptive clause is ambiguous about how far back it reaches, and the summons — which must name each infant individually — is the place where the ambiguity is resolved. Read it before apportioning a caption.

The return of service names a parent

THE MOST GENEALOGICALLY VALUABLE SENTENCE IN THE WHOLE CAUSE, and it is in the administrator's sworn return, not in any pleading: "Received this writ on the 24th day of Nov. 1900, and on the days hereafter named I served the same by copy, personally, on the within named defendants, viz: Jennie Cooper on Nov 26th 1900; and as to the within named defendants under the age of fourteen years, I served at the time I served the same on one D. C. Boucher, who has the care of said Jennie Cooper. And I served on November 28th 1900, Mary Cooper, and on same date served the same on Mrs Andy Cooper the mother of the said Mary Cooper." — Geo. W. Pennington, sworn before T. D. Fanker, Probate Judge, 30 Nov 1900. "Mrs Andy Cooper the mother of the said Mary Cooper" — crop-verified at ~3.2×. ⇒ Mary Cooper is the daughter of an "Andy Cooper", and Samuel Cooper and John Cooper both credit the decedent with a son Andrew (1860-1899). So a child of John Cooper predeceased him, and his children stand in his place — which is exactly what the four minors in the caption are. And the statute makes the absence eloquent. Service on an infant runs to "the Guardian, or father, or if neither guardian or father can be found, then upon the mother, or the person having the care of such infant". ⇒ the mother was served because the father could not be found — i.e. because he was dead. Andy Cooper is not a party to a suit in which his daughter is one, which says the same thing again. Graded probable that this "Andy" is the Andrew (1860-1899) of the trees, and that is the catalog's identification: the return gives no given name beyond "Andy", no dates, and no statement that he was the decedent's son. No parent-child link is written into any person header from it. → [name.621], [name.622], [name.623] Jennie was served differently — through D. C. Boucher ([name.628]), "who has the care of said Jennie Cooper", not through a parent. ⇒ she appears to have had no parent available, which hints she is orphaned of both, and possibly not Andy's. An inference from the form of service, and nothing more.

What this petition does not say and why it matters

UNLIKE [A.192], THIS PETITION NEVER STATES THE DEFENDANTS' RELATIONSHIP TO THE DECEDENT. [A.192]'s petition says, in terms, "Said defendants are the only children and heirs at law of the said decedent". This one has no such sentence. Its recitals run: debts → costs of administration → no personal estate → therefore necessary to sell → died seized of lot 7 → appraised $100 → no widow living → prayer. ⇒ The eight defendants are the persons the court required to be before it — i.e. the heirs at law — but WHICH of them are children, which are grandchildren, and how they descend is NOT on this page. No parent-child link is written into any person file from this record. PARTLY ANSWERED, ON THE VERY NEXT PAGE. The return of service supplies for ONE defendant what the petition withholds for all of them — Mary Cooper's mother — and thereby her grandparent-relationship to the decedent. The lesson: in a cause that does not plead relationships, the SERVICE papers can still carry them, because the statute forces the officer to say through whom each infant was reached. And the guardian ad litem's answer — predicted here as the next best hope — turned out to be a pure formula naming nobody. See the_guardian_ad_litem_answer_is_a_FORMULA_not_a_finding. Still wanted for the other six: the confirmation and the distribution, which are the only remaining places shares could be recited.

The first defendant correction

CORRECTED, AND THE FIRST READING WAS WRONG. The caption begins "SAID Benjamin Cooper", not "David Benjamin Cooper". There is no David Cooper. What happened. On the petition page the opening word was cropped at 8× and read as "David", and the absence of a comma before "Benjamin" then raised a genuine-looking question: one man called David Benjamin, or two men, David and Benjamin? That question was recorded as unresolved and no name.N was created for either reading — which is the only reason the error cost nothing. What settled it. The Order to Advertise & Sell, three pages on, abbreviates the defendant side to "Said Benjamin Cooper. et. al." — with an unmistakable capital S at ~3.2×. Going back to the petition at 10×, its opening word is four letters — tall looped initial, a, dotted i, d — with no "v" at all. ⇒ "Said" in both places, in the same hand, by the same clerk. Why "Said" at the head of a caption. It is a copying artifact: the recording clerk is engrossing a caption whose parties the record has already identified, so he writes "Said Benjamin Cooper" — "the aforesaid Benjamin Cooper" — exactly as the order does. And the correction resolves the question in the useful direction: the first defendant is Benjamin Cooper ([name.629]), singular, of full age — which matches the Benjamin R. "Ben" Cooper (1848-1931) that Samuel Cooper and John Cooper credit as John's son. ⇒ seven defendants, not eight. The lesson is the same one this thread keeps relearning, in a third costume: the ambiguity was not resolved by more magnification (8× produced the wrong answer confidently) but by a second instance of the same words elsewhere in the same record.

The legal notice verbatim

Page 134 — service by publication on the two minors who could not be found: "Legal Notice. Edith Cooper and Ethel Cooper, whose residences are unknown, and heirs at law of John Cooper, deceased, will take notice that George W. Pennington, Administrator of the Estate of John Cooper, deceased, on the 24th day of November, A.D. 1900, filed his petition … alleging that the personal estate of said decedent is insufficient to pay his debts … that he died seized in fee-simple of the following described real estate … Being known as Lot No. seven (7) in the village of Mexico … The persons above mentioned will further take notice that they have been made parties defendant to said petition, and that they are required to answer the same on or before the 21st day of February, A.D. 1901." Published in the Wyandot Union, per the affidavit of C. A. Wormley. (Note: [A.192]'s 1888 notice ran in a different paper, the Wyandot Chief.) Two things this gives that the petition does not. It calls Edith and Ethel "heirs at law of John Cooper" in terms — a relationship statement, though it does not give the degree. And their residences were UNKNOWN, so they had to be reached by publication — whereas Mary was served through her mother and Jennie through her carer. ⇒ the four minors split two and two: two present in the county, two gone from it. That is a real fact about the family's dispersal, and it makes Edith and Ethel the hardest two to trace forward.

The guardian ad litem answer is a formula not a finding

A PREDICTION OF MINE, MADE TWICE IN WRITING, AND FALSIFIED. Both [A.191] and the first draft of this entry said the guardian ad litem's answer would be "the document that names the minors' parent" and ranked it the top next step. Here is the whole of it: "And now comes J. W. Grisell, guardian ad litem, heretofore appointed in said cause by said Court, for the said Mary Cooper, Edith Cooper, Jennie Cooper and Ethel Cooper, minor defendants … and for answer to said petition, denies all the material allegations therein contained, prejudicial to said minor defendants; and further says they are of tender years, and not acquainted with the law in such cases. He therefore prays the Court to protect their rights in this case, and for such relief as may be just." No parent, no residence, no relationship, no age beyond "tender years". It is a pure formula, and it would read identically in any of the hundreds of causes in this volume. What actually produced a parent was the sheriff's RETURN OF SERVICE — because the statute compels the officer to state through whom each infant was reached, and he therefore had to name "Mrs Andy Cooper the mother of the said Mary Cooper". The transferable rule: in a cause that does not plead relationships, the genealogy is in the SERVICE papers, not the pleadings. Pleadings say what a party wants the court to do; service papers have to record what the officer actually did, and to whom. → [name.630] One thing the answer does confirm: it lists the minor defendants as Mary, Edith, Jennie and Ethel — a third independent statement that there are four minors and that Mary is one of them.

The order to advertise and sell

Page 135 — "Order to Advertise & sell", styled George W. Pennington, Administrator … Plaintiff v. Said Benjamin Cooper. et. al. Defendants: "This Cause coming on this day to be heard, upon the petition, proofs, and the answer of J. W. Grisell, Guardian ad Litem, for the minor defendants Mary Cooper, Edith Cooper, Jennie Cooper and Ethel Cooper, and the evidence, and that as set forth in the petition it is necessary to sell the real estate therein described, to pay the debts of…" [desc], read at ~0.9×; the remainder of the order runs past the crop. No shares are recited in the portion read, so the hoped-for per stirpes grouping of the heirs is not here either. The confirmation and the distribution remain the places to look.

How both pages were located

Two lookups, both from the printed key table, and both exact on the first probe. The index: volume 3 uses the identical printed form as [A.190]/[A.191], so Co = page 50. Image 25 = page 26 gave the offset; the Cooper row is at page 51 = image 44. The record: the index cited "Real Estate → Record 11 p. 130", and the county's volume list identifies Record 11 as "Complete records 1897-1902 vol 10-11". Image 338 is an END placard, so volume 11 begins ~341; image 406 = page 62 fixed the offset, and two pages per opening put page 130 at image 440 — exact. The page-130 digit had been the shaky one on the index row (the last glyph could have been 0 or 6). It was settled the way [A.189] prescribes — by the register, not by more magnification: image 440's printed page number reads 130 at 5×, and the case on it is Cooper. ⇒ the index reading is confirmed by the thing it indexes.

The sale and confirmation verbatim

Pages 136-137 carry the cause to its end. The order's terms (23 Feb 1901, T. D. Fanker, Probate Judge): the sale to be on the premises, "upon the following terms: Two Thirds cash in hand, the balance in Six months from date of sale. The deferred payments to be secured by mortgage on the premises and to bear interest from the day of sale, payable annually." Report of Sale, dated 30 March 1901: "I duly advertised the real estate … in the Wyandot Chief … for at least four consecutive weeks prior to the 26th day of March 1901, the day of sale … and on said day, at the hour of One o'clock P. M., I attended at the time and place, and offered said real estate for sale, free of dower, when Mary Ogden bid to pay for the same the sum of Sixty Seven Dollars, which being the highest and best bid that was offered, and being more than two-thirds the appraised value of said premises, I then and there sold the same to her for that sum." — Geo. W. Pennington Sale Confirmed. Deed to Purchaser ordered.: "…the Court, after having carefully examined said return, being satisfied that such sale has in all respects been legally made, does hereby approve and confirm the same, and order that the said George W. Pennington as such administrator, make to the purchaser Mary Ogden, a good and sufficient deed for the premises so sold." All [desc], read at ~0.9×; the sale price and the purchaser's name are the values that would want crop-verification before being quoted as figures. $67 against a $100 appraisement is barely over the statutory two-thirds floor ($66.67) — i.e. the lot drew exactly one serious bid, from an heir. Two newspapers in one cause, which is worth knowing for anyone hunting the notices: the legal notice to the absent heirs ran in the Wyandot Union (C. A. Wormley), while the sale advertisement ran in the Wyandot Chief (H. A. Tracht, the same publisher who carried [A.192]'s 1888 notice), four weeks from 25 February 1901.

The distribution names nobody and that is the end of this route

THE LAST HOPE FOR SHARES IS GONE, AND THE REASON IS ECONOMIC RATHER THAN CLERICAL. The confirmation runs straight on into the distribution, and here it is in full: "And the Court coming now to distribute the proceeds of said sale, amounting to Sixty Seven Dollars: It is ordered that said Administrator, out of the money in his hands, pay: First — To the County Treasurer the taxes that may stand charged against said property. Second — The costs and expenses incurred in the sale of said property amounting to $[blank]. Third — To pay out the balance of said fund according to law." — T. D. Fanker, Judge. No distributee is named and no share is stated — "according to law" is a formula, and the costs line was left blank. And the arithmetic explains why. The whole real estate realised $67; the debts were already over $354 with costs of administration "about Fifty Dollars". ⇒ there was no balance to distribute — the fund was consumed by taxes and the expenses of sale before it ever reached an heir. So the shares never existed to be recorded. ⇒ the per-stirpes grouping that would have sorted the seven heirs into families cannot be obtained from this estate at all, and the Final Account at Record 26/429 will be correspondingly thin. Recorded as a bounded negative, not a gap in the reading. The cause is read end to end — pages 130-137, images 440-443 — and the family structure it yields is exactly: seven heirs by name, one parentage (Mary's), two residences unknown, no shares.