Abstract:
When Pelham Humphries left the Appalachians in 1829, his family was content to forget about him. In 1835, he was killed in Texas by his friend William Inglish and suspicion arose that Inglish, through forgery, transferred Humphries's land into his own name. Inglish sold part of the land in the 1860s. But after oil was discovered in 1901, the ownership of the oil rich land was debated for years and several law suits were filed. By the 1980s the status of the land was still not determined.