Wednesday, August 17, 2016

John Moore Probate Records on AmericanAncestors.org and Ancestry.com

My geneasblogging colleague and cousin (we are descended from many of the same New England ancestors), Bill West wrote about finding the will of John Moore (1602-1674) recently in 52 ANCESTORS IN 52 WEEKS 2016 WEEK 29: JOHN MOORE OF SUDBURY, MA. PT2 (posted 17 August 2016).  John Moore is my 9th great-grandfather.

I thought I might be able to save him some time in transcribing it, but when I looked in my RootsMagic database I had a summary note about the probate record, but I did not have a copy of the document or a transcription.

So I went looking for the 1673 will of John Moore on Ancestry.com and American Ancestors.  I found it easily on both places, and the images were very similar, and were the actual handwritten will and other papers in the Middlesex County Probate Court packets.

1)  Here is a screen shot with the first page of the will of John Moore (1602-1674) of Sudbury on American Ancestors:


I downloaded the six pages in this probate packet, and renamed them, and put them in my "MA Probate" file folder in my "To Be Filed" file folder to be transcribed.

2)  I also found the probate file for John Moore (1628-1703) of Lancaster, Massachusetts on the American Ancestors site, and downloaded the 12 images in that file.  This John Moore (1628-1703) was the son of John Moore (1602-1674), and is my 8th great-grandfather.  Here is a screen shot of the first page of this will:


I downloaded those pages, renamed them and put them in my "To Be Filed" file folder.

3)  Here is a screen shot of the first page of the John Moore (1602-1674) will from a search on Ancestry.com:


This probate file has the same pages as I found on American Ancestors.  Two more probate files for a John Moore were included in the series found in this search.

Unfortunately, those files did not show up in the Ancestry search.  As I've noted before, a user should not trust the Ancestry search engine to find every entry in the Massachusetts, Wills and Probate collection (and other states also).  They just did not index every name in the probate indexes.

All of these images on AmericanAncestors.org and Ancestry.com were taken from the Family History Library microfilms of this Middlesex County Probate Records collection.

4)  Now the question I have is:  Will Bill West transcribe these or will I?  It would probably be most time efficient if we each did one and shared with the other.  Bill - your call, which one do you want to do?

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2 comments:

Bill West said...

Hmm.It looks like there are two probate files for John Moore Jr (1628-1702-3):
The 12 page #15363 . which I didn't see before, and the four page #15364.I had started transcribing the 4 page file earlier this afternoon but didn't get very far because I went out to shop.

It looks like the 4 page file consists of the last four pages of the 12 page file. I wonder why that happened?

I'm good with working on either one but I can't say how long it will take me. :)

Bill West said...

Correction
Apparently I screwed up somehow downloading the files and what I started transcribing this afternoon was part of the 12 page #15363. I'm not sure what happened. I need to straighten this mess out.