Willcox v. Stroup

Willcox’s great-great uncle was the Confederate Major General Evander McIver Law. In 1865, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman attacked South Carolina. The Governor of South Carolina, A.G. Magrath declared martial law in Columbia and appointed General Law the Provost Marshal of the City. A large number of records where removed from Columbia for safekeeping. It is assumed that at this time General Law came in possession of the documents, and there is no evidence that he do so illegally. In 1896 General Law tried to sell the documents to a New York Book Dealer. Later in 1940 General Law’s granddaughter had the documents and attempted to sell them to various Universities in South Carolina describing them as documents entrusted to her grandfather at the time of surrender. No sale resulted but the documents where put on microfilm at the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina. It is unclear how those documents ended in Willcox’s step-mothers closet some 50 years later, where Willcox found the documents; however, these documents it would appear have been in the family for over 140 years. The defendant Stroup is the director of the South Carolina Department of Archives and History obtained a temporary restraining order to prevent the sale. Then Willcox brought this declaratory action to declare title.