- Joined
- Nov 26, 2016
- Location
- central NC
This was driving me crazy as well because I recalled reading about it here on CWT. I finally found it in a thread that included discussion about the legitimacy of Longstreet's appointment from an Alabama congressman--despite being a Georgia resident--to West Point. Here is the post w/ the info link.
https://civilwartalk.com/threads/was-longstreet-made-a-scapegoat.135348/page-15#post-1694343
The info from the linked source:
These connections of the Dent family to Ulysses S. Grant stuck in my mind for years, while I did no further research to investigate the relationships. Things changed in December of 2013 while I was photographing the old Chancery Court record books of Madison County. In Record Book R, pages 496 – 511, is documented Chancery Case Number 374, involving Dent family members and the family of James Longstreet of Richmond County, Georgia. This James Longstreet died in 1833, leaving a very detailed Last Will and Testament drawn up in 1830. His son James, who later became a primary Confederate Army corps general and “right-hand man” of Robert E. Lee, was one of the Complainants in the case against his mother, Mary Ann Dent Longstreet, and co-defendant Edmund Toney of Triana.
The case was first filed in the 32nd District of the Northern Alabama Chancery Division in Huntsville on 29 December 1852. It was resolved with a judgment in favor of the defendants on 2 June 1854, with the complainants having to pay all court costs in the case. The case concerned the possible violation of the terms of the will in respect to the inheritances of the children of James and Mary Ann Dent Longstreet. The executors of the will were the widow (co-defendant) Mary Ann Dent Longstreet and her son William plus her brother-in-law Augustus Longstreet. The Longstreet children (complainants) were William D. (executor), James (CSA general-to-be), Henrietta (wife of Archibald Mills Clemens, son of James Clemens, who was Founder of Madison), Rebecca (wife of Reuben Ruff), Julia (wife of William E. Murphy), Eliza B. (wife of Walter B. Lucas), Maria N. (wife of Elisha Dismukes), and Sarah Jane (unmarried). The registered complainants included Mary Ann Dent (only child of Anna Longstreet Dent, who had died), “an infant, under the age of twenty-one”. Mary Ann Dent was represented in the case by her “next friend, Hutchinson Dent.” The dispute centered around the distribution of the numerous slaves of the Longstreet estate, two of whom had been sold to Edmund Toney, thereby involving him in the case as a defendant. Distribution of the elements of the estate among the senior James Longstreet heirs was to have been done by 1847, but the distribution had not been done as of 1854. The case was adjudicated in northern Alabama not only because of Edmund Toney, but also because after the passing of the senior James Longstreet in Georgia, the family had moved to Somerville in Morgan County, Alabama. Somerville is just across the Tennessee River from the Toney family holdings in Madison County, which was the location of the Chancery Court for the area including Morgan County as well as several other counties in northern Alabama at the time. By the time of prosecution of the case, James Longstreet's widow and most of the children and slaves had again relocated to Noxubee County, Mississippi. However, the Toney involvement and the fact that the questionable and delayed division of estate property had occurred while the family resided in Somerville kept jurisdiction here.
http://huntsvillehistorycollection.org/hh/index.php?title=Connections_of_Grant_&_Longstreet,_A_Vintage_Vignette
Thanks for these links. What you have quoted is what I actually shared in my OP. It was information I had
discovered from a link to the old Chancery Court record books of Madison County (Record Book R, pages 496 – 511) - the Chancery Case Number 374. I'll have to read the links you have provided. It will be great to have some more information added. I really want to know if General Longstreet stopped speaking with his mother after this case was closed.
I should have known this forum might be the best resource.
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