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The inventories also give an idea of the material wealth and comforts acquired by these Highlanders in the New World . As one would expect, many items relate to farming; for example livestock, tools, and harvested crops. Also listed are household furnishings: pewter plates, earthenware dishes, corner cupboards, pillows, bed ticks, quilts, chairs, and cutlery. Several items suggest pursuits other than farming: a jacket pattern, cloth, spinning wheels, spools, looms, and whiskey kegs. Several items were probably unique to the Settlement: a scotch wagon, books in Gaelic, tartan plaids, and scotch dirks. Books, as crucial to some frontier families as were plates and dishes, were another important item in the estate records and were frequently kept in the family.5 For example, when Alexander McIntosh died in 1819, he left his books to his son James, and in 1826 Janet Noble (widow of Alexander) kept her husband's books as part of her share of the estate. These books, mostly religious texts, were in English and Gaelic, and generally valued at less than fifty cents a piece. But some books of exceptional quality existed as in the 1820 estate inventory of Andrew Smith in which two untitled books in English were valued at $2.25, and his Gaelic Bible was valued at $2.00. The previous year Daniel McPherson's English Bible was valued at $1.50.6 One can glean the accomplishment of some immigrants from their estate records as well.
Though these lists of goods and people provide insight into the make up of the community and the material success of its population, examinations of these wills also reveal the emigrants' attitudes towards land and family. Although no wills are identical, there are four common patterns to the dispersal of property – entail, non-partible, partible, and partible/non-partible. Entail, the method by which land is devised to all future generations and is held in trust by the current one, was common in colonial America , most notably Virginia . However, a move to abolish entail was successful by the end of the eighteenth century.7 Non-partible inheritance, usually seen in the form of primogeniture, was common as well and (at least in a few areas) was used to settle intestate cases even though this practice was not permitted in Ohio . However, this did not prevent someone from willing all his property to a sole heir, to the exclusion of all others, if he so desired. Partible inheritance was when each heir received an equal or almost equal share of the estate. In partible/non-partible inheritance, the farm was kept intact by bestowing it upon a single heir and other heirs were compensated with cash or other property.8 Those who died intestate had their affairs settled as directed by Ohio law, which called for strict partible inheritance among direct descendents after allowing for what was due the widow by right of dower. Individuals who performed the same duties as an executor received “letters of administration”. In most cases, recipients were a close male relative and the widow. If a person died unmarried or childless, the state recognized all siblings or descendants of siblings as heirs.
The mandatory inclusion of siblings (or their heirs) who had remained in Scotland could greatly delay the settling of the estate, underscoring the importance of wills to this community, especially when land was involved. The full enormity of this system was likely brought home to the community when Angus McIntosh died intestate in 1831 at the age of 40. According to state law, his heirs were his four sisters in the United States and one brother and his deceased sister's four children in Scotland . It took three years of transatlantic communication to come to terms over the estate, during which time his sisters and his mother, now approaching age 80, could not sell his land or settle his debts. Consequently, they were almost wholly dependent upon the charity of their neighbors.9
