Mary "Polly" Grim

Marriage bond signed by John Bright. Minister was William King.

Jacob C. Bright, the husband of Mary "Polly" Grim, disappeared in the year 1830, never to return, leaving Polly with a large family to raise. Polly, with the help of her mother and father, John an Elizabeth Grim, kept the nine children together as a family. When her father died about 1832, she began to have difficulty to provide for her family. On 2 January 1833, at a court held in Pendleton County, it was ordered that her son, David, aged 13 years on 21 April 1832, be bound to George Heffner to learn the trade of a blacksmith according to law. Mary (Polly) and Jacob lived and had land on the county line of Pendleton and Bath. In 1848, his land was located in Highland County, VA.

It was further ordered that her son, William, aged 12 on 4 September 1832, be bound unto Frederick Keaster, and that her son, Matthew, aged 10 on 1 Jun 1833, be bound to Henry Wimer to learn the trade of a shoemaker.

So the family was split and Polly (Grim) Bright removed to Harrison County with her younger children. There she married the widower Joseph Osburn on 20 August 1842.

The will of Joseph Osborn written in August 1845 left everything to his second wife (Mary Grim Bright). If she remarried then it was to go to one of her children. If she did not remarry, she could disperse the property however she pleased. Needless to say, the children of his first marriage were not pleased. One researcher thinks that Joseph and wives are buried in a Batton Cemetery up Hastings Run in Harrison County, WV.

In 1977 it was determined Mary's first husband Jacob lived out his life in Brown County, Indiana where he died in 1861. For all intent and purposes, his family in Virginia thought he had died soon after leaving the Commonwealth in 1830.