The last page of a will written by Dollie Vincent and signed by her, leaving her belongings to her sisters and their daughters. She gave away a cow and calf, a heifer, two numbered feather beds, a white counterpane, a walnut flower box, a knitting box, a book box and her books, a green box of sheets and pillow slips, a silk dress, and a set of framed pictures known by their subjects: a little girl with soap bubbles, “the orphan sisters,” a girl with a dove, “the Marriage in Cana,” and a boy with a falcon. Popular prints like these were sold widely in the middle of the 1800s. Her sister Nancy received everything else, to use “when she is well, as well as when she is sick,” and to sell if she needed to, along with anything that might come to Dollie “from my Father’s estate.”
Will (last page) of Dollie Vincent, leaving her things to her sisters and nieces – undated, about 1866–1868
Transcription notes: spelling, capitalization and punctuation follow the original. Words in [square brackets] are editorial notes; [?] marks an uncertain reading and [illegible] marks words that could not be read.
[This sheet begins in the middle of the will; any earlier page is not in the folder.]
I give to Sister Catharine’s doughter [daughter] Love Louisa one cow and calf, my white counterpine [counterpane, a bedspread] in the pink box which has her name on it L. L. C. the box and all that is in it, with the picture little girl with soap bubbles, and my feather-bed no. 1.
I give to sister Love’s daughter Sarah Catharine the little heiffer that was her mother’s with all that was her mother’s. I give her also that little walnut flower box, my knitting box and her choice one of my smallest pictures & one silk dress.
I give sister Betsy a large picture the orphan sisters.
I give to Sarah Wayne the girl with the dove, and to her mother the marage in cana [the picture “The Marriage in Cana”].
I give to sister Nancy the boy with the falcon, [struck through: a] my book box with all my books, the green box with all my sheets and pillow slips, my feather-bed no. 2, and all the rest of my things to use when she is well, as well as when she is sick, and to sell if she cant get all she wants without. and if there is any land or any thing coming to me from my Father’s estate I also give that to sister Nancy to do as she pleases with.
Dollie Vincent
[There are no witnesses, and no date or probate note on this sheet.]
About the original
The names match the heirs of James Roach (died 1866) named in the 1868 quitclaim deeds in the land records of this collection, which strongly suggests that Dollie Vincent was a daughter of James Roach and that the “Father’s estate” was his. Those heirs included Levi L. Wayne and his wife Louisa (compare “Sarah Wayne” and “her mother”), Berry Nelson and his wife Elizabeth (“sister Betsy”), Mary Vincent, Nancy Roach (“sister Nancy”), Calvin Cox and his wife Lovy, and the minor heirs Charley B. Cox and Lovy L. Cox. “Love Louisa,” daughter of “sister Catharine,” whose box was marked “L. L. C.,” is very likely the minor heir Lovy L. Cox. Whether Dollie Vincent is the same person as the “Mary Vincent” named in 1868, and how “sister Love” and “sister Catharine” fit in (both seem to be Cox wives, and the gift to Sarah Catharine of “all that was her mother’s” may mean her mother was dead), the papers here do not settle. A Francis R. Vincent, who died before 1850, owned a lot on the Miry Branch that later passed to James Roach (see the land records); he may have been Dollie’s husband, but that is not proven. The undated division of Sally Roach’s life estate in this folder (about 1868) says James and Sally Roach had seven daughters: it gives lots to Nancy Roach, Mary Vincent, Louisa Wayne, Elizabeth Nelson and Lovey Cox, and to the children of two others (C. B. and Lovey L. Cox; Henrietta and Jesse Lancaster). If “Dollie” was a nickname for Mary, as it often was, she would be the Mary Vincent of that list, and “sister Catharine,” mother of Love Louisa, would be one of the two daughters who had died by then.
The sheet is undated and unwitnessed, and a will without witnesses was valid in North Carolina only if it was entirely in the writer’s own hand and found among her valuable papers. The words “when she is” at the end of one line and “well” at the start of the next were written on either side of a fold.
Source: Will (last page) of Dollie Vincent, leaving her things to her sisters and nieces. Roach Family Papers (#346), East Carolina Manuscript Collection, J. Y. Joyner Library, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, Box 1, Folder b (Inventories, Wills, and Estates, 1783–1868). Collection guide. Digitized folder: ECU Digital Collections, 0346-b1-fb.
Images courtesy of East Carolina Manuscript Collection, J. Y. Joyner Library, East Carolina University. View in ECU Digital Collections: 35992.
Part of the Roach Family Papers collection on East Carolina Roots.
