TNGenWeb Project/TNGenNet, Inc., (a Tennessee nonprofit public benefit corporation). "The Howard-Smith Collection" Transcription copyright: 1998, by Mrs. F. A. Augsbury; all rights reserved. The originals are at the McClung Library in Knoxville. This file is in text format. Please use your browser's "back" button to return to the previous page. ********************************************************************************* To: John From: E. P. Gaines ------------------------------------------------- Memphis Tn. December 5 1832 My dear John____ I received a few days before my late visit to the Charlotte Chancery Court your letter containing an expression of the wishes of our worthy friend Samuel Moore on the subject of the expences incured by me in the suit for our part of the round lick tract of land. In the hurry of business in preparing for my trip to Charlotte, I mislaid your letter without answering it. I have just now received your letter of the 12 November. The subject of money struck me with peculiar interest in as much as I have been obliged often to run myself aground in my land affairs without ever having received a dollar from any of my friends interested with me. In the McCall case however my expenditures have been comparatively very moderate - nevertheless thank you and our friend S.M. for his consideration and goodness in making a proposition to assist me. I have in this case expended but between fifty & sixty dollars - of which I consider the Mr. Moores accountable to me for two thirds, as they are entitled to two thirds of the lands to be recovered. In addition to what I have paid to lawyers & others, I advise Mr. Moore to send a fee of 25 dollars of Lawyer Anderson of Murfreesboro (whose christian name I do not know) who I learn is a very good lawyer, & attends the courts in Wilson County, and request him to assist Mr. Yerger - who is a good lawyer but will be the better of Mr. Andersons help. I first desired Mr.Andersons brother William E Anderson the late judge, with his partner J. P. Clark, to bring the action against McCall - but they declined going to Wilson Court their other calls having much practice having prevented I am strongly impressed with a belief that we shall recover the land attempted to be taken from us by McCall but such is the bearing of the Statutes of limitation in this state, in respect to the other lands due us from Martin Armstrong. And we must rely on the mode of adjustment suggested by me to you in the last year, & which you replied Mr. Moore of North Carolina disapproved. On this point I can only say that no man can be more anxious than myself to obtain the land so long & so justly due to us from Mr. Armstrong and I shall gladly aid as far as possible in obtaining it, but an examination of the facts and the law upon which the issue of a controversy in chancery or at law would depend , has convinced me that unpromising as the mode suggested by me may seem , it is the only one that I can venture to attempt.If the opposited party are disposed to be just, they will cheerfully convey to us the land so long due to us, and of which they have many thousand acres;---if on the contrary they are not disposed to be just they will assuredly avail themselves of the Statute of limitations, which had been running against us long before I was authorised to attend to the business. The Round lick tract would be lost in the same way, but for the circumstance that McCall was our acknowledged tenant at the very time he obtained & set up his adverse claim; and the law will not favour a tenant in setting up an adverse claim against his landlord without giving notice thereof--& the Statute of limitations does not begin to run in such a case until notice is given nord can it bar the claim of the landlord until it has run for 7 years. In the case of McCall the first notice given by him was to Mr. William Lyon, in Decr. 1828 or Jany. 1829 as our friend Mr. Lyon will prove I have obtained in my great land suit in chancery an Interlocutory decree (of which I annex hereunto an extract, for your information) and which cannot but be followed by a final decree in the ensuing year probably in May; next as I have sought and found most of the documentary & other evidence required to establish all my claims, & indeed more than I ever intimated to you. My love to my sisters & all friends near you. E.P.G.