Four years of litigation, two courts and an appeal to the Supreme Court of Illinois — over a cottage measuring twenty-four feet by twenty-four. Read from the decision itself rather than from family memory, the case turns out to run the other way round: Thomas Hamall was the one who sued, his former wife was the one who appealed, and the court expressly declined to decide the point of law the family has long believed it settled.

Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Uncovering the human stories behind legal history, one family at a time.