Female name on a 1884 probate record

[floppyslater]

Hi matthewj64,

I tend to agree with your assessment - her name was probably Valeria.  I suspect her new marriage - which occurred only 4 or 5 months after her husband's death, was to a cousin - George W. Reber.  There is a possibility that her maiden name may have been Reber too.  I suspect that is why my gggrandfather, Rudolph Benz (or Bentz) took legal action to recoup some of the money from the estate. 

Charles Benz died in a horrible accident in 1882 when he was run over by a train from the Reading Railroad while walking to work and dragged to his death.  The couple never had any children.  It is interesting how quickly she remarried.

[avm228]

They seem to have been George W. Reber and Lovina Bentz upon marriage (14 Oct 1882 Reading, PA).

[floppyslater]

That would match up with her intermarriage with George W. Reber after the death of her husband Charles. What I have not been able to locate is the original marriage between Charles and Lovina/Valarie.

[avm228]

Have you found Charles in the 1880 census to identify his marital status at that time? 

I see from his findagrave listing that he was born in Philadelphia in 1846 - is that right?

[floppyslater]

That is correct. Charles was born in Philadelphia. The family relocatd to Reading, PA around 1855. Apparently his father John Christian Benz, was unhappy that the church he attended in Philadelphia began holding services in English instead of German. Family members moved freely between Philly and Reading since it was a relatively short train trip. In 1876 the Philadelphia Directory has Charles living with Rudolph Benz. He is listed as a bricklayer. At the time of his death in 1882 he was back in Reading. I am making a guess in trying to determine where Valeria was originally from. Since it appears that her marriage to George Reber involved a family member I assumed that she was originally from Reading, Berks, PA too.

[avm228]

How do you know that her second marriage involved a family member?

[josey]

The word intermarry was used differently in the past, it could just mean married each other without the current connotations of in[ter]breeding.

[floppyslater]

I am still digging for additional evidence but it is the only time I have seen the term used in any historical document I reviewed. Considering it was a probate case involving lawyers and a judge I suspect the terminology was deliberately used to convey an underlying rational for the legal claim being leveled by Rudolph Benz.

It does seem odd that a brother-in-law would go after a widow's windfall unless there was some underlying cause.

[floppyslater]

For those following our conversation about Charles Bentz and his wife I wanted to include his findagrave.com listing. 

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=53694657