The auction of Mary’s belongings that October also suggested that, for all her complaints, the elderly widow had accumulated considerable property. Among the auction items cited in a newspaper advertisement were “stocks of horses, cattle, sheep and hogs, plantation utensils of every kind, carts, hay, and fodder.”18 In fact, Mary had amassed such substantial landholdings that George alone inherited four hundred acres of valuable pine land; he gave it to Robert Lewis, Betty’s son. All of this property had been owned by a woman who saw fit to petition the Virginia legislature for a private
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