Letter to Vera Renfrow Cowart from Julius T. Long, Lawyer, Shreveport, LA

June 14, 1937

Mrs. Vera Renfrow Cowart,

Wallace Ridge, La.

Dear Mrs. Cowart:-

I received the papers signed up; but since we know two of the children are minors, although your father signed their names or authorized same, it will be necessary that a tutor and under-tutor authorize that settlement. Now, your father can be appointed natural tutor for these minors, if he has not already been appointed.

Write me telling me if he has already been appointed their tutor, and if so at what Court and place he was appointed for them. Unless there has been some settlement of the estate between him and his children, there may not have been any cause for him to be appointed their tutor. This appointing requires considerable work and expense, but if he has not been then we must attend to it before we can settle this matter up.

So write me fully about this. If we need to have him appointed, I will need the date of the birth of each child, and its full name, and to know with whom each lives now. I need the date of the birth of each at any rate. So please give that to me at once along with any other information you think of service. Tell me in what parish your father now lives, where I can reach him by mail. So among the things I want to know are the following:

1.- the parish in which your father lives, and his full name and post office address, and how I can go to his home.

2.- The full names and dates of the births of each of those minor children.

3.- Whether or not your father was by the Court appointed tutor for them, and if so where and when.

4.- And whether or not he will approve this settlement for these minor children as their tutor.

Now I want you all to know that I will not sacrifice what I know to be your rights; and think that this proposed settlement is as much as we can possibly hope to recover or get for your mother’s heirs, and each of them. Your mother had sold her interest in the land before she died to her brother, and at most he heirs could inherit her 1/4 she inherited from her father: and since her father had sold and collected for certain mineral rights before he died, your mother’s children cannot set that aside. you must accept the succession as you find it encumbered to an extent with the leases and sales of mineral made by your grandfather.

Yours truly,
Julius T. Long