Probate records (wills, estates, etc.) are a major resource for genealogists. They can include wills, records of the final settlement papers where the division of the property was recorded, guardianship papers for individuals under legal age (usually under the age of 21), inventories of property in the state, money used in the on-going affairs of the estate by the administrator. These records may give references to land ownership papers, relationships between individuals and the deceased, or between each other in the estate.
The state of Delaware has an extensive state-wide index of probate records. Unless you know exactly where to search, the index is a bit difficult to locate in Delaware’s Public Archives web site. From their description we learn:
These indexes are the primary finding aid to our holdings of manuscript probate records for all three counties from c. 1680 to c. 1925. These are not indexes to all the names appearing in the records, but only the names of the deceased for whom the files were created. Contained in each index are the individual’s name, and a date or dates. The dates correspond to the date of the documents within that individual’s file and may refer to a date of the will or to a date for probate to begin.
If you’ve got Delaware ancestry, you will definitely want to bookmark this site: http://www.state.de.us/sos/dpa/collections/probate.shtml
Comments (0)