Barnes v. Bess

Ackey E. Bess, a negro resident of Portsmouth, Virginia, died in 1936, leaving an estate of between eight and nine thousand dollars, consisting largely of real property. He was around seventy or seventy-five years of age at the time of his death. His wife had been dead about ten or eleven years. There was only one child of their marriage, a daughter, who was also dead. This daughter left surviving her one child, Jennie Bess, a grandchild of Ackey E. Bess, his sole surviving heir-at-law, and one of the defendants in error. The old negro man retired, in the year 1925, from a merchandise…