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Indices of Will Books for Monroe County, Ohio

Will Books # 1 thru 38 - 1867 - 1992

 

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          Did your ancestor leave a will?  Did someone else leave a will in which one of your ancestors was a beneficiary or was mentioned?  Are you interested in discovering the distribution of your ancestors property?  Are you interested in who was mentioned in an ancestral will?  How can you find answers to these and many more family-history questions?  Many of the answers are available in the wills that are on file in the records room of the Monroe County, Ohio Probate Court in Woodsfield, Ohio.

          There are about 50 will books in the record room of the Monroe County, Ohio Probate Court.  Each is chock-full of wills, records of will probates, legal cases of heirs contesting wills, court actions to introduce wills that had not been registered before the will -maker died, and much more.  You have two options for investigating these wills.  1) Go to the Probate Court record room located in the Monroe County Court House in Woodsfield, Ohio and search the original will books.  2) Buy a CD copy of the will book that contains the will(s) that you are interested in researching.

          Whichever route you choose, you can make your search much more fruitful if you first research the indices of the will books.  First select a will book that is near the date of death of the person whose will you wish to investigate.  Don’t give up if you do not find the will you are seeking in the book containing the date of death of the person.  Remember that wills were frequently registered with the court years prior to the person’s death.  So, look in books that preceded the persons date of death by several years.  Also remember that many wills were made and not registered with the court.  These wills may have been kept at home or given to someone for safe keeping.  The will may then have been introduced following the death of the will-maker.  In these cases, it is wise to search will books for years that followed the person’s death.  So be sure to search the index of will books both before and after the person died.

          Each of the will books found in the court house has several hundred pages.  They are too large to be placed on this website.   So, each will books that was made between the period 1867 – 1969 (will books #1 through #23) has been made into a compact disk (CD).  CDs of these will books are available either from this website at:  http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~harringtonfamilies/CD-Status.htm  or from eBay at:  http://stores.ebay.com/Genealogy-and-History-Research-Help.   The indices of will books #1 through #23 have also been placed on this website so that researchers can more easily locate will books that contain wills of specific members of their research. 

Will books that were made between the period 1969 – 1992 (will books #24 through #38) have not been made into CDs but the indices of these will books have been photographed and placed on this website.  Therefore, the indices of will books #1 through #38 (1867 through 1992) are available on this website.

Be sure to search the indices for the will you need.  This will identify the specific will book or will book CD that you will need to access.

          To use the index below, click on the name of the will book that you are seeking.  This will take you to an index of the index pages found in that Will Book.

 

 

List of Will Books for which Indices are Available

 

*    Will books #24 through #38 are not available on CDs.  Only the indices for these will books (#24 through #38 ) are available on this

website.  Click on the name of the will book to access the index.  Copies of individual wills can be purchased from the Probate Court.

 

CDs of Will Books #1 through #23 can be purchased from the Monroe County Historical Society.  Click on the printable CD order form below.

 

 

For more information about other CDs that are available go to the following website:

 http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~harringtonfamilies/CD-Status.htm

 

Click here for a Printable CD Order Form

 

The author of this CD can be contacted at:  Richard Harrington, 9517 Mount Vernon Landing, Alexandria, VA, 22309; telephone 703/780-9109; e-mail [email protected]

The address of the Monroe County Probate Court is: Monroe County Probate Court, Court House, 101 North Main St., Woodsfield, Ohio  43793; Telephone 740/472-1654; There is no e-mail address

 

 

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