The Wills of Nash County, North Carolina, Volume 1, 1777-1848

What follows in this work are summaries of the wills of Nash County, North Carolina, for the period from that county's formation in 1777 through the year 1848.  This period contains approximately half of Nash's wills through 1900.

Each county has something unique about its records when compared with other counties.  Three things are unusual about the recording of the wills of Nash County.  First, what is presently labeled Will Book I in Nashville is a typewritten manuscript; in other words, this is a later copying of an earlier work.  It has also been said that the "original" will books are lost.  They are not "lost"; they are housed in the North Carolina Archives and have been microfilmed. They are considered "Retired" Will Books.  Second, because of the "discovery" of the retired will books.  The wills are not in probate order in the retired will books.  Earlier wills are "bunched" in among later ones.  Last, it is clear that a number of wills were presented and probated, but not recorded until later.  This is especially the case when the Clerk of Court in the 1840s entered a number of wills that had been the responsibility of the previous Clerk.  

Each will is numbered and indexed accordingly.  There are four (4) indices:  A full name index; a women's first name index; a slave name index, and a place index.

Stephen E. Bradley, Jr.

(1992), 2010, 8.5" x 11", paper, 194 pp.

ISBN: 9781680348507

101-B4850