Thank you for the clarification. I know things were much different then, and it is pointless to condemn our ancestors by holding them to today’s standards.
People owning people, slavery, was the default, not the exception through history. And in the United States, inheritance went both ways. Debts too.
Think about that for a while. When your parents died, whatever they owed, fell on you. I’m surprised this hasn’t made a comeback, considering the level of student loans and credit account (CC) debt, mortgages etc. As I recall studying it, they maintained two different types of debtor’s prisons generally. One for what we would call secured debt, and others for unsecured debt. And they were horrible.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filial_responsibility_laws
Still does for medical bills in most states. Not Texas.