Jeffrey Groah
Dr Jeff Groah's SiteHistorical Documents 4
There is a rather curious document that I discovered among Augusta County Court records that pertain to the property sold on 28 Feb 1863 by Betsy Groah to John Fauver during the Civil War. It appears that John Newton, the Groah estate administrator, failed to attach Virginia State seals to the deed when he transferred it after Betsy’s death on 23 Nov 1866. What makes this curious is that on 22 Nov 1866, John Newton had been ordered by Augusta County Court to deliver additional money to Betsy. The reason that he was ordered to deliver more money is that he had defrauded Betsy in the following way: The original sale of land to John Fauver was denominated in Confederate dollars. This was worthless after the war and the last payment on the property came due on 25 Aug 1865. Consequently, the estate administrator, John Newton, had to recalculate the price in US dollars. He came to about $20 in the recalculated price, which is far too low for a 1/3 share of well over 330 acres.
Why might John Newton have tried to hurt Betsy financially? Because John Newton’s son, James W Newton, was captain to Betsy’s sons while they served in the 5th Vir Inf, from which they deserted. Also, John’s son was terribly wounded in 1864, losing his left leg. John was obligated to give Andrew Jackson Groah his inheritance during the war but claimed that he couldn’t find him since he was a deserter from “our army” at the time. By the end of the war, there was no money left in the estate to pay Jack his inheritance.
I suppose that it was unlawful to sell land on which there existed a prior claim. AJ could have made a claim against the estate and his inheritance could have been clawed back from John Fauver since the full payment had not been made. This never happened.
Betsy sued John Newton for giving her far too low a sum and she won on 22 Nov 1866. She died the next day and the property was illegally transferred to John Fauver. This defect in the title was not cured until 1890 when the Augusta Mining Co, in part owned by James W Newton, went to court to perfect the title. This was done as seen in the documents below.