The Stafford Legacy

About the Book

THE STAFFORD LEGACY tells of the 20th Century descendants of the 18th Century Staffords of Blue Meadow Farm in southeastern Pennsylvania.  The time covered is from June, 1969 to June, 1970.  The first-person narrator is nineteen-year-old Jenny Carter.  The legacy is a large estate left in trust for a grandson, plus a much earlier legacy - physical characteristics handed on by a long ago preponent ancestor, duplicated in each generation by at least one male descendent - the Stafford.  In this story the testator has named his older son, Vincent, beneficiary for life; but a grandson, child of younger son, will eventurally inherit the estate.  Vincent's resentment of the will, plus his envious hatred of Gregory for being the Stafford, inevitably leads to trouble.

In Part I, Jenny is thirteen when her friendship with Gregory begins.  By the time she is fifteen, friendship has advanced from "kid sister" to love.  She is sixteen when Gregory, not waiting for his draft call, goes into the Army.  She does not see him again for three years.  He is sent first to West Germany and from there to Vietnam.  His letters stop coming, he is reported Missing in Action.  Finally word comes the he is safe, but charged with giving aid and comfort to the enemy.  After several more months the charge is dropped and he at last comes home.

Vincent Stafford, for some time in failing health, tells Gregory not to get his hopes up - he will never come into his inheritance.  Jenny thinks this is a threat against Greg's life.  And she is right.  When Vincent is found dead in his study of a bullet wound in the temple - and there is no gun - Greg is charged with murder.

PART II covers the trial.  The defense can produce only character witnesses, no one who can testify that Gregory was elsewhere at the time of his uncles's death.  Nevertheless, testimony of some of the Prosecution witnesses turns out to be in his favor, and when he take the witness stand in his own defense, it becomes plain that "reasonable doubt" exists in the minds of some of the jurors, in the mind of the presiding Judge, and even the prosecuting attorney.  

Still, there are the facts:  no gun, no evidence of an intruder, no grounds for suspicion of anyone else.  Then Jenny at last remembers something that she has desperately been trying to remember all along.  When this memory comes, she sees how Vincent Stafford could have taken his own life, and so testifies.  At this point the District Attorney joins Defense Cousel in asking the jury for a verdict of aquittal.

Part III:  Greg and Jenny, now married, adjust to life as it now is for them at Blue Meadow - the gradual resumption of normal activities, but surrounded by hostility, for only a few people in the area accept Greg's innocense, most continue to believe him guilty.  Finally, by a surprise incident, even the most bitterly loyal of Vincent's friends are at last convinced of the truth.  A happy future is indicated; and Jenny - now all of nineteen! - dares to hope that someday they "will even by young again."

About the Author

Mary Wallace, graduate of Temple University’s College of Liberal Arts, Class of 1928, began writing stories as soon as she learned the basics of English grammar and composition - which is to say at about the age of ten. She is still at it: for love of putting words together, for the joy of creation, and then for the driving need to give her make-believe people the nearest they can have to real life - life in print.