Probate Documents: Where There's a Will...

By Jennie Shurtleff

Probate records are useful genealogical resources. In addition to providing information about guardianships, name changes, trusts, adoptions, and insolvency, probate records can also include estate documents that provide clues to family relationships, interests, employment, and lifestyle.

Some of the most useful probate records for genealogists are wills and inventories. Wills state how a person would like to have his or her estate divided after they pass away. An inventory was usually a listing of the property that was owned by the head of the household at his or her time of death. Inventories were particularly important in the 18th and 19th centuries, when cash was not always readily available, and people often relied on a credit system to purchase the items they needed. Completing an inventory when a person passed away was one of the ways to insure that outstanding debts were settled.

To create an inventory, appraisers would document all of the deceased’s possessions. The ways in which an inventory was arranged varied.  Sometimes items were listed by function; therefore, things such as cooking implements or farm equipment would be grouped together with like implements. Other times inventories might be arranged by value, with the most valuable items being listed first. However, a third common method of organizing inventories is notating the items as they were found as the appraisers went from room to room. This third type of organization can be particularly valuable to researchers as it can help one to visualize what the rooms might have looked like based on the items in the rooms.

One of the surprises to many modern-day researchers is the listing of clothing in the inventories. Today, following a person’s passing, clothing is often discarded or given away to second-hand stores. In diametric contrast, in early times, anything made from textiles was highly valued because of the amount of labor required to make it. Consider the case of making a pair of woolen pants. First, one would have to raise at least one sheep and shear it, which was no small task. Then came the process of preparing the wool that included carding, spinning, winding, weaving, fulling, and finally sewing the wool into clothing or a household item. Given the amount of work in making the textiles, one did not take the resulting clothing or textile product for granted. Consequently, in some wills a parents’ clothing might be divided up so that one heir might receive socks and a jacket, another might receive two pairs of pants, and a third might receive a shirt and a hat.   

In addition to clothing and textiles, other possessions listed in a probate inventory can tell a great deal about how the family lived. For instance, in a home where there is a ripple, brake, scutching board, and hackles, one can assume that the family processed flax and made it into linen. Similarly, if the probate inventory includes such things as rennet bags and milk pans, it is likely that they were making cheese. The more of an item that a family had, such as milk pans, the more likely it is that they were producing the product for sale as well as personal consumption. The presence of items such as carpets, curtains, and china would have been considered luxuries In the late 1700s and early 1800s; therefore, the presence of such items in a probate inventory would suggest a level of affluence. 

A hatchel (also called a hackle or a heckling comb) was used to remove the fibers from the flax straw and to then remove the debris.

Another thing to keep in mind as one looks at inventories is timing. When was the inventory made? Since most people in early New England worked as farmers, their inventories might vary widely from one season to another. In the spring and early summer, many farmers might be low on consumable inventory for their livestock and themselves and therefore appear to be quite poor, whereas in the fall, after a productive summer, their pantry, root cellar, and barns were would have likely been filled with the necessary supplies to tide them through the winter.

The probate inventory shown here is for a man named Church Holmes. He and his wife, Charity, owned a property that was located on what is now Maple Valley Road in North Bridgewater. After Church Holmes passed away, the appraisers came to inventory his property. In the early 19th century, when his estate was being settled, it was not uncommon to provide a widow with a third of the estate, called a “widow’s thirds” or “dower,” for her use during her lifetime or until she remarried. Most married women, at this time did not have a separate legal existence from their husband. Except under special circumstances, married women could not own property and did not have the right to their earnings. Even the dowry, or property given at the time of her marriage from her family, was usually controlled by her husband. The practice of providing a dower had been recognized as part of English Common Law since the adoption of the Magna Carta in 1215 as a way of protecting women by providing them with some means to care for themselves after losing their husbands.

As one can perhaps imagine, estate administrators and appraisers faced a huge challenge when it came to dividing up holdings in an equitable way. Imagine trying to break a small property into pieces and still have the property useful and a viable living space for the widow. Instead of running a straight line through the property and giving one person the house, one person the barn, and another the woodshed and orchards, instead many early appraisers and administrators divided up the property in such a way that they hoped each of the people with an ownership interest would be able to have the things they needed, such as a place to sleep, store their food, and keep their animals and wood.

In the case of Church Holmes’ property, before the estate was divided, part of the farm was sold to a neighbor, George Boyce. In addition to part of the land, George Boyce purchased one equal half of the threshing floor, the stable, the north half of the shed, the south half of the house, the east half of the cellar, the east half of the buttery, the north half of the churn room, the north half of the porch, one equal part of the oven, the south part of the woodshed (which was eighteen feet in length), and the clothes press in the front entry. In addition, with his purchase, Boyce acquired the privilege of passing through the west part of the cellar, the north part of the kitchen, the aisle to the churn room, and access to the porch for any necessary purposes. He also received one equal half of the land on which the house porch and wood house stood, an equal privilege of the dooryard and of drawing and piling wood near the wood house, the privilege of conveying one half of the water in pump logs or otherwise from the spring on the west side of the road to any place or places that he saw fit, and the privilege of passing through the east part of the barnyard with cattle and hay. His acreage with buildings and privileges was valued at $600.00.

Church Holmes estate received all the land not purchased by George Boyce. In addition, the estate was granted, an equal part of the threshing floor in the barn, the long stable, a long scaffold, the short scaffold, the privilege of passing through said Boyce’s yard to occupy a shed, the privilege of using the land around the barn for drawing hay, watering cattle or any other necessary purposes, as well as the west half of the cellar under the house with “with an equal privilege in the east door.” The estate also was granted one equal part of the cellar, stairs, and door; one equal half of the chamber stairs and door; all the meal room and all the south part of the kitchen north of the middle of the fireplace; the privilege of passing through said Boyce’s wood house to the back house; and the privilege of fetching water under said Boyce’s wood house and porch in pump logs. The land set off to the estate contained about 50 acres and, like George Boyce’s property, it was valued at $600.00.

Of the estate’s portion of the property, Charity was then given her dower or third. Charity received a woodlot that contained about three acres, plus an additional thirteen acres of land near the house. She also was granted the north square room and necessary privileges in the kitchen and dooryard, six feet of the wood house adjoining said Boyce’s, one half of the barn floor, all the short scaffold, the south half of the shed and the privilege of passing through said Boyce’s yard to occupy it, and the privilege of using the front door to enter the house. The value of what she received from her husband’s estate was $200.00.

In 1927, long after Charity had sold her dower’s interest in the property, the chimney in the house where Charity had lived caught fire, and the house burned. Interestingly, there are still daffodils that bloom near what would have been the foundation of what had formerly been Charity’s home.

From the division details of Church Holmes’ estate, one can begin to imagine what the Holmes’ property looked like, from the barn — with its stables, threshing floor, and multiple scaffolds — to the house — with its porch, fireplace, buttery, churn room, kitchen, meal room, and chamber(s) upstairs.

Probate records, such as the ones of the Holmes family, have historically been kept at a town’s district probate court. However, in recent years, there has been a move toward consolidation, and many of the probate records for Windsor County that were created prior to 1945 are now archived in Middlesex at the Vermont State Archives.

Although most of the records that were transferred from local courts to the state archives have some form of index, they are not indexed in a uniform way. This can make using probate documents a challenge. Also, it is important to remember that not all Vermonters went through probate. In fact, the vast majority – about three-fourths of the population—did not.

If you are interested in using the probate records in Middlesex, the administrators suggest that you first call the reference desk at (802) 828-2308. The reference librarians can generally do a quick search and let you know if the person you are researching has any records in the Archives.

 If there are records in the Archives that you’d like to see, it is strongly recommended that you make an appointment in advance to insure that you will be able to view the records when you get there. The Vermont State Archives is generally open Monday-Friday, 9 am -4 pm, excluding holidays.