Bare's Executors v. Montgomery

In the year 1886, the appellee, Grace Ellen Montgomery, nee Hamilton, was left an orphan at the age of thirteen years. Without means of support and on the charity of the world, she was taken into the home of George and Amanda Bare, a childless couple in the county of Rockbridge, as a member of their family, but not as a daughter in the legal acceptation of the word.

Mr. and Mrs. Bare were people of frugal habits and accustomed to the work incidental to farm life. For a period of twenty-seven years the appellee, without educational advantages, remained in the Bare family. According to the…