probate records are some of the most valuable and interesting
genealogical documents you need them for your research on today's episode
of the ancestral findings podcast I'll show you where to find them
probate records are some of the most valuable informative genealogical records you will come
across there are several different kinds and each one can tell you previously unknown things about
your ancestors you may find probate records that are simple inventories of estates wills
with varying amounts of personal information in them and legal records from proving the will and
sometimes contesting it probate records let you know what things your ancestors owned how much
money they had how well they lived and their family connections if a will names children
grandchildren parents siblings in-laws and friends as they often do this information will allow you
to confirm suspected relationships and learn new ones so where do you find probate records there
are a few different places county courthouses county courthouses can contain probate records
going back centuries once they are recorded at the county level they never leave it unless
something happens to the courthouse and the records are destroyed burn courthouses were
an issue in many counties across the nation in the 19th and early 20th centuries and the bane
of genealogists everywhere who want to access the records that were in them assuming the court
house where your ancestor lived is still intact you should be able to go there and look up their
probate records in the courts index or get a court employee to help you find it you will be
finding the original probate records by going in person if you can't make the trip in person
such as with a courthouse that is far away you can call or write the court to see if they will look
up your ancestor in their records and send you any information they find in the probate files
of course not every person is going to leave a probate record behind but a lot of people did
it is extremely worth it genealogically speaking to check to see if a probate record exists for
your ancestor ancestry.com ancestry.com just added a huge new collection of probate records
from around the United States this year these are the same probate records you will find in county
courthouses ancestry.com sent representatives out to county courthouses across the country
to get the courthouses to allow them to digitize their probate records while not every courthouse
complied most of them did you can now look up most of your ancestors probate records on ancestry.com
rather than travelling to or writing a courthouse the images are scans of the originals and you
can download and save them to your computer to add to your own genealogy records and to refer
to whenever you need to in your research older relatives if you have older relatives who have
collected a large amount of family information over the decades you should visit them and see
what they have in their boxes chess and files if they will let you they may have records of wills
and probate proceedings that go back generations even if they only have these records for their
own parents and/or grandparents you are still finding some genealogical gold bring a scanner
with you to capture the images to make sure they are preserved for posterity your relative may have
probate records that do not exist anywhere else thanks to burned courthouses these rare documents
could open up whole new avenues of research for you state or local archive buildings probate
records from colonial times may be found in county courthouses but are more often found
in archive buildings if you are looking for the probate records for an ancestor who lived
in America before the American Revolution visit or write to the Historical Society in the city
town or county in which they lived their probate documents may have been preserved and made their
way there you might even be allowed to handle an original document from the 1600s or 1700s
with remnants of red wax seals still on them even if you don't get to handle the original
you will still be shown a copy or a microfilm version of it probate records are incredibly
valuable genealogical documents they are well worth searching for on every branch of your
family the more of them you discover the more you will learn about your family history and
about your ancestors as individual human beings that is a real treasure in the study of genealogy
the Biltmore Estate is a unique and beautiful piece of American
architecture with a fascinating history on the next episode of the ancestral Fighting's
podcast I'll tell you why you should make a point to visit it on your next vacation
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