Inherit the Land

May 15, 2006
In the Jim Crow South of 1920, two white sisters, Sallie and Maggie Ross, bequeathed their extensive North Carolina estate-including 800 acres and two of the Ross family's three gold watches-to two African Americans, Bob Ross and his daughter Mittie Bell, who had long lived with the sisters. Stowe chronicles the legal battle that resulted when the sisters' distant cousins contested the will on grounds of mental incompetence. In the absence of meaningful connections with blood relatives, Bob and Mittie became, respectively, a de facto brother and daughter to the two sisters-leading to the fateful statement, used in the trial as proof of Maggie's insanity, that Mittie's husband Tom Houston was known as "Miss Mag's Son-in-Law," and acknowledged as such by Maggie. Stowe relates the relationship among Maggie, Bob, Tom and Mittle while the sisters' beneficence plays out in the trial as both acts of lunacy and as extensions of their well-known reputations for generosity. Stowe's excavation of this historical challenge is thorough and valuable, but tends to strangle Stowe's engaging voice; he transcribes large sections of the trial and quotes from periodicals at length. It's interesting to note that his citations are limited to local papers, because the trial had no national impact; hopefully, this intriguing account will help correct that. 15 b&w illustrations.

May 15, 2006
In 1920, Maggie Ross, the richest woman in Union County, NC, died, leaving the bulk of her estate to Mittie Bell Houston and Mittie's father, Bob Ross, both of whom she had helped raise. They were black, and she was white, but she considered them her closest kin. Many of Ross's white neighbors were scandalized by her will, and dozens of relatives contested it claiming that no sane white person would leave a sizable estate to black people. The story is intriguing, but rather than providing a compelling narrative, Stowe (writing, Trinity Sch. at Greenlawn, South Bend, IN) writes with painstaking, plodding attention to detail. Much of the text documents the trial and is almost entirely composed of verbatim testimony that reads more like a transcript than a historical account. This book will be useful to researchers, especially for its competent bibliography, but will engage only the most dedicated general readers. Academic libraries with collections in Southern history or African American studies might consider purchasing." -Emily-Jane Dawson, Multnomah Cty. Lib., Portland, OR"

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