Robert Treat Paine Papers, Volume 2
I expected to have seen you at December or March Court, to put an end to our dispute about the Land, but I suppose the bad weather hindred you & as a neighbour of yrs. told me you wanted to know what the Cost was I take the first opportunity to inform you the whole cost amounts to £47.5.2 as taxed by the Court upon the paying of which I will give you a Deed of all the Land & I should be glad if the affair might be settled at June Court. Yr. hble. Servt.
Thomas Paine received a judgment against Elnathan Eldredge, Jan. 30, 1740, for £273.17.9 plus costs. In Eldredge on July 27, 1741, deeded to Thomas all his "Housing lands & meadow lying247& being in Dartmouth." One piece of these lands containing eight acres was sold in 1751 by the widow Deliverance Eldredge, as administratrix to her husband's estate, under the assumption that it still remained part of the estate. When RTP was collecting his father's debts, he noted in his diary for June 2, 1758: "Saw the Widow Eldridge, and settled my Business abt. the Land."
Before the Superior Court in Bristol Co., Oct. 1759, RTP et al. were granted the recovery of 8 acres of land in Dartmouth sold by Deliverance, as administratrix of her husband's estate, to Jonathan Kenny in 1751 (writ of summons, 19 Aug 1762).