Sailors have always been a tight knit group, bound together by the dificult and dangerous profession. So it is a surprise to find this will from 1776,by Thomas Hele Gist, mariner of the city of Exeter who names his pregnant wife Elizabeth as sole heir and executor, though he does ask his brother in law to help out.
But he finishes with , “I give [this] to my honourable mother the sum of ten guineas for a ring and I would have given my sister Anne had she behaved as s Sister the same legacy also” .
What did she do?
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