Shame about the deeds. Funnily enough I'm in Wales & need to visit Scotland whilst your in Scotland & need to visit Wales, how mad is that? Have you visited this area at all during your research? How exactly do you descend from Elizabeth?
When Thomas' wife Elizabeth died he was 71 years old but 3 years later he married Ann Vaughan who was then 46 years ( his eldest daughter your Elizabeth was just 4 years younger) whilst he of course was now 74! Anyway Thomas was a wealthy farmer & built a brand new village shop but fell off the scaffolding during the construction & died 4 weeks later of a compound fracture of the tibia, blood poisoning & bed sores
Although he left his land to his 7 surviving children (your Elizabeth had died the previous year), the will stated that they had to pay his new widow £10 per annum for the rest of her life and that she should have the rent from 2 farms and also 2 cows, a colt & all other effects belonging to him. As she was a similar age to his children, the £10 per annum was infact a lifetime for them as although I only have the death dates for 5 of the surviving children, Ann outlived 4 of them!
Needless to say when I visited my grandparents almost 100 years later, they hated me buying sweets at the local shop (which was still run by Ann's descendants) but I didn't know why until I started researching my family history. Sadly by this time my grandparents were dead so I had no chance to ask them about it at all.
