Looks like archive.org have messed up the reader again.
... let us
go back again to the grand old lady Elizabeth
Taylor, whom we found, at the beginning of
our story, signing her will. We remember
that she had two daughters and that one of
these daughters, Dorothy, married a man
named William Lee and had by this marriage a
son named William, who was the only grandson
mentioned in the will. He was appointed her
executor and her residuary legatee. His four
children were likewise the only great-grand-
children named in the old lady's will. To her
great-granddaughter, Betty Lee, she left her
bed-rug-blanket, three pairs of sheets, her
prayer-book, one cow and calf, one ewe and
lamb, one pewter basin, her Great Trunk, her
long-handled pot-ladle and frying-pan, her
little salt cellar, and her looking-glass. Betty
was her namesake and fared best in the old
lady's will.
To William Lee's other two daughters, Ann
and Sarah, she gave each a cow and calf, a ewe
and lamb, a small trunk, and a pewter basin.
To William's son, Richard Lee, she bequeathed
her Great Chest, and evidently there
was a considerable estate which William Lee
inherited as residuary legatee.
William Lee died in 1764, seventeen years
after the death of his grandmother. In all
those seventeen years he had not finally settled
her estate. If he had done so, we might never
have come into possession of the interesting
information which connects Lincoln with the
Lees. As it was, each of William Lee's three
living grandchildren (Sarah apparently had
died) was mentioned in the settlement of
William's own estate as entitled to sums still due
them under the will of their great-grandmother,
Elizabeth Taylor. To Richard Lee, one of the
grandchildren, was payable four shillings,
Betsy Lee and Ann Lee did not receive their
inheritance directly; it was paid for them to
their husbands, who are named in the accounting
of the administrators, Thomas Hanks and Joseph
Hanks. These two young men, cousins, married
the two Lee girls, as we discover through
these ancient wills and reports to the probate
court and probably never should have discovered
otherwise. And Ann Lee, by her marriage
to Joseph Hanks, became President Lincoln's
great-grandmother.
