A good Genealogy day

I posted some weeks ago about copying about 20 probate records (wills, inventories, etc) from the FHL microfilm for Bristol County, Massachusetts in Volumes 1 to 4 for the period 1683 to 1725 or so. I completed transcribing and abstracting these records in my ancestral database just this week.

However, there were several records not on the microfilm in Volume 3, due to the second half of the clerk's copy book being lost. I found out that some of the missing probate records had been abstracted back in the 1920's in Volume 22 of the Mayflower Descendant magazine.

I ordered the FHL microfilm for Volumes 22-25 of the Mayflower Descendant, and they called yesterday to inform me it was available. I went to the FHC to read it today, and I copied the probate abstracts for the estates of George Cadman, Hannah Cadman, William White Sr and William White Jr, all of Dartmouth MA, who died in the 1710-1780 time period. I found several other records of interest in these issues for my RI and MA families, including wills for John Paine and Jabez Snow of early Eastham MA.

I still need to find some early probates in Plymouth County MA and then I'm going to start on my Rhode Island estates. I have indexed the RI ancestral families based on the abstracts in the Rhode Island Genealogical Register journal, and I have found the records on microfilm in the FHL Catalog.

You might wonder why I'm just now doing these searches. My answer is that I concentrated on four other ancestral lines in the last ten years, and am now concentrating on this line. There is another line in Norfolk County MA that I have not done any probate or land research on at all. I am still in the "prove it" phase of my research for these ancestral lines.

I don't see the light at the end of my genealogy research tunnel yet...but I know that I'm working my way toward the end.