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APPEAL from the Circuit Court for the Western District of Virginia. The case was thus:
William King, of Abingdon, a village of Washington County, in the southwest courner of Virginia-a man possessed of valuable brine springs, at Saltiville, close by it, and of other large estate-died in 1808 childless, leaving a wife and eight brothers and sisters; among the brothers one named Samuel, and among the sisters one named Hannah, married to John Allen. He left also a nephew, William King, Jr.
By his will he devised the bulk of his estate, valued at about $500,000, to his nephew (the said William King, Jr.), on a condition which, as things turned out, proved impossible. The fact of the impossibility of the condition led at once to litigation, and in 1830 and 1836, the will in two different suits was the subject of construction in this court.
It was held in the first suit, that the whole estate was devised to William King, Jr. (the nephew), subject to the life estate of the widow, but as it belonged to a court of chancery to determine whether he took the estate to his own use or in trust for the heirs of the testator, that question was left undecided. Accordingly, a bill in chancery was filed to test that question, and in that case, the second one, this court decided that he did take in trust for the heirs.
Samuel King, and Mrs. Hannah Allen, the wife of John Allen, thus each became entitled to an eighth part of the estate. Samuel King lived at Somerset, a place in Pulaski County, in the southeast corner of Kentucky; Allen and his wife at Saltville. The two places were, perhaps, two hundred miles apart.
Independently of any general interest acquired as just mentioned by Samuel King in his brother William's estate, the brother by his will had made a special provision for him thus:
'I leave to the said Samuel, in case of personal application to the manager at Saltville, or to my executors at Abingdon, on the 1st day of January annually, $150. If not called for on that day to be void for that year. Receipt to be personally given.'
The testimony of different witnesses thus described Samuel King.
'He was notoriously and incorrigibly intemperate; though not often in such a condition that he could not go about.'
'I do not recollect that I ever saw him where spirituous liquors were to be had that he did not drink to excess.'
'He was generally intoxicated; that is to say, generally speaking, when I saw him he was so.'
'If I ever saw him sober, I have no recollection of the fact. He was in the habit of constantly drinking.'
This Samuel King, as the testimony further showed, was not only intemperate but was always considered very poor. One witness, Mr. Fox, of Somerset, clerk of the County Court of Pulaski, Kentucky, thus testified:
'To the best of my recollection he was at all times in a manner destitute of any property or credit. I well recollect that he applied to me as often as three times to borrow the sum of $5, each time, as he said, to defray his expenses to Abingdon, Virginia, where he was going to draw his legacy coming to him from the estate of his brother William King, which sums I lent him, he promising to refund the amounts upon his return, which, however, he never refunded.'
Mr. Benjamin Estill, a lawyer, long resident in Abingdon, Virginia, said:
'He was believed to be totally insolvent for three years before his death, which event took place in 1812. I have seen him several times in Abingdon applying for his annuity, and understood that he came on foot from Somerset in Kentucky, where he lived.'Besides being poor and given to drinking spirituous liquor in excess, there was testimony about him thus, and there was no testimony to contradict it.
'I always considered him as a very wild and visionary man, incapable of making bargains to any amount, when he had been drinking, and especially when there was any intricacy in the transaction.'
'I never saw him at any time in a condition when he could contract or trade to any advantage to himself or his family.'
Additional witnesses confirmed this account of him; one saying:
'I never saw him after the death of his brother, that I thought him capable of transacting business of any kind. He ought to have had a guardian, and if he had been in the North would have had one.'
We have mentioned that one of the heirs of William King, of Abingdon, was his sister Hannah, married to John Allen.
Allen's character was thus testified to.