R364
Husband: John J. Pierce
Wife: America (Wood) Pierce
Father: Edward Wood [R003]
Mother: Sarah (Gilliland) Wood [R003]
Born: 3/14/1833
America, the last of Edward and Sarah Wood’s children, appears not to have married in Bath County. At a very young age she was in Powhatan County Va. (~20 miles W of Richmond) and married to a husband who was in financial difficulty. She couldn’t have gone there alone; she must have accompanied her brother Joseph [R363], twenty years her senior, on whatever quest took him east, and once there became married.
On 2/12/1851, when America was only 18, her husband conveyed her share of the estates of her recently deceased father Edward and brother James [R365] to her brother Joseph T. Wood [R363] as a deed in trust, to secure a debt of $3000 owed by her husband to Robert W. Pierce. Joseph, as Trustee, was authorized “...when ever required by the said Robt W Pierce...” to liquidate America’s inheritance and apply the proceeds to her husband’s debt (Bath County DB11-171). As a minor, America’s name doesn’t even appear on the deed.
In 1852 John Pierce defaulted on his debt, and Joseph was required to sell America’s patrimony, and also all of Pierce’s other property, at a public auction at Powhatan County Courthouse on 6/2/1852. The highest bid, only $300, was by the lender Robert W. Pierce. He acquired title to America’s inheritance. However, Edward Wood’s heirs did not convey America’s Randolph County bequest to her until 5/20/1854. On that date they signed a deed granting her and John a parcel of land “...known as the Sulphur Spring tract and being the said land so allotted by said Edward Wood...” which lay west of the Tygart Valley River and between the holdings of John Q. Wilson, Joseph Moore, John W. Moore, and Augustus Wood (DB20-65). Shortly after that (6/7/1854) the deed acknowledging Robert W. Pierce’s purchase of the property was entered in the Randolph County Court (DB20-118).
One would like to know what happened to America later in life.