The Virginia Gazette

March 16. One of the most extraordinary Causes was heard this Week in the Court of Chancery that perhaps ever came before a Chancellor. Some few Years since General Stanwix, his Lady and Daughter, were all lost (by the sinking of the Vessel!) in their Passage from Dublin to Parkgate. The Lady was his second Wife, and the Daughter was by the first Wife. At his second Marriage, it was stipulated in the Settlement that if the General survived his Lady the personal Estate was to descend in such a Line; if the Lady survived the General, then in such a Line; and if the Daughter survived them both, then in such a Line. There were Claimants in the Cause under the Supposition of each of these Circumstances. The Party whom the General's Survivorship was to have benefited contended that the Ship, being lost in tempestuous Weather, it was more than barely probable that he was upon Deck, and that the Ladies (as is almost ever the Case in these Situations) were down in the Cabin, and of Course, so confined, were subject to more early Loss of their Lives than the General, who, as a Man of Arms and Courage, was, they asserted, more able and more likely to struggle with Death than Women, and in which he might probably have been assisted by broken Masts and other Parts of the Rigging. Those who claimed on the Supposal of the Wife's surviving her Husband contested that the General was old, and consequently feeble, and by no Means strong enough to resist the Shock of such a terrible Attack; that the Lady was considerably younger, and, though of the weaker Sex, proportionably stronger than her Husband, and, being fond of the General, not improbably was with him at the Time; therefore, in every reasonable Supposition, survived him. The third Party advanced, that the Daughter was younger, and of a more hale Constitution than either the General or his Wife; that undoubtedly the uncommon mutual Affection of the two latter rendered them insensible of their own respective Danger, in their Feelings for each other, so that it was on the Side of Probability that they sunk down in Death together; that the Daughter, on the contrary, though a dutiful, and perhaps affectionate Child, yet, being still younger than the Mother in Law, and having no such violent Attachment to any second Person as the General and his Lady reciprocally had for each other, and being too, from the Circumstance of Youth, to be supposed still more unwilling to part with Life than either Father or Mother, the Probability of being the last Survivor was infinitely in Favour of the Daughter. The Decree is not yet pronounced.