Sycamore Row - John Grisham

of what I’m looking for. I’ve dug through every deed book, all the way back to the early
1800s, and I’ve scoured every copy of the local newspapers from the day they started
printing. I’ve also done a fair amount of genealogical research, into the Hubbard,
Tayber, and Rinds families. As you know, it’s very difficult with these black folks. Lettie
was raised by Cypress and Clyde Tayber, but she was never legally adopted. She didn’t
know it until she was thirty years old, according to Portia. Portia also believes, as do I,
that Lettie was really a Rinds, a family that no longer exists in Ford County.”
Jake took a sip of coffee and listened intently. Lucien propped up a large, handdrawn
map and began pointing. “This is the original Hubbard property, eighty acres,
been in the family for a hundred years. Seth inherited it from his father, Cleon, who died
thirty years ago. Cleon left a will giving everything to Seth, and Ancil was never
mentioned. Next to it is another eighty-acre section, right here, at the bridge where they
found Seth after he fell off his ladder. The other forty acres over here were purchased by
Seth twenty years ago and are not important.” Lucien was tapping the second parcel
upon which he had crudely drawn a creek, a bridge, and a hanging tree. “Here’s where
it gets interesting. This second tract of eighty acres was purchased in 1930 by Cleon
Hubbard. It was sold to him by Sylvester Rinds, or the wife of Sylvester Rinds. The land
had been in the Rinds family for sixty years. What’s unusual about this is that Rinds was
black, and it appears as though his father was the son of a freed slave who took
possession of the eighty acres around 1870, during Reconstruction. It’s not clear how he
managed to assume ownership, and I’m convinced we’ll never know. The records simply
do not exist.”
“How did Cleon take ownership from Rinds?” Jake asked.
“By a simple quitclaim deed, signed by Esther Rinds, not by her husband.”
“Where was her husband?”
“Don’t know. I’m assuming he was either dead or gone because the land was in his
name, not his wife’s. For her to be able to convey property, it would’ve been necessary
for her to inherit the land. So, he was probably dead.”
“No record of his death?”
“None, yet, but I’m still digging. There’s more. There are no records of the Rinds
family in Ford County after 1930. They disappeared and there’s not a single Rinds to be
found today. I’ve checked phone books, voter registration records, tax rolls, you name it
and I’ve been through it. Not a single Rinds anywhere. Pretty unusual.”
“So?”
“So, they vanished.”
“Maybe they all went to Chicago, like everybody else.”
“Perhaps. From Lettie’s deposition we learned that her mother was about sixteen
when she was born, out of wedlock, and that she never knew her father. She says she
was born near Caledonia, down in Monroe County. Her mother died a couple of years
later—Lettie doesn’t remember her—and an aunt took her in. Then another aunt. Then
she finally landed over in Alabama with the Tayber family. She took their last name and
got on with life. You heard the rest of it in her deposition. She’s never had a birth
certificate.”