Mecklenburg County, NC - Mecklenburg County Will Abstracts

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Fred A. Olds

                An Abstract of North Carolina Wills
                  From about 1760 to about 1800
       Supplementing Grimes' Abstract of NC Wills 1663-1760
           Prepared from the originals and other data by
                           Fred A. Olds
    Collector for the NC Hall of History, and presented by him
         Edition limited to 125 copies, of which 100 are
                  For the counties in the State
        Privately Printed & Bound by "The Orphan's Friend"
                 Printery & Bindery, Oxford, NC
                            1925

The North Carolina Wills

In 1906 the late Secretary of State J. Bryan Grimes published a very valuable 
book containing abstracts of the "State Wills," as they are called; that is 
to say the wills during the period between 1663 and 1760, when it was 
required that all should be filed in the office of the secretary of the 
Province of North Carolina. After 1760 it was permitted to have the wills in 
the counties.

A request has arisen for a book covering abstracts of wills to 1800, from 
1760, and this volume is the answer to it; an answer made under innumerable 
difficulties. This 40-year period covers the last 15 years of the Provincial 
Period, the 8 years of the war of the Revolution, 1775-1783, and the 17 years 
after the Revolution. A good many wills of date prior to 1760 will be found 
in the book, there having been failure to send these to the secretary of the 
Province.

The losses of original wills have been great. It was said in 1752 that many 
court documents had then been lost. Frequent changes in the location of the 
seat of government contributed to those losses, but fires caused a great 
percentage.

Of the present 100 counties, 32 existed in 1775, when British rule and the 
Provincial or Colonial system ended with the flight in June of Governor 
Josiah Martin. Between 1775 and 1800 there were formed 28 counties, three of 
these in the closing days of 1799, namely Ashe, Greene and Washington. Thus 
the total number when 1800 began was 60.

Most wills are carried only in the will books, the originals having ceased to 
exist. Of the will books, many have been lost.

In some cases only the year of the probate appears; in some the year and the 
month, and in some the year, month and day. The County Court met four times a 
year. In some cases there is no date of probate given in the records, and in 
such cases there is nothing else to do but set down the date of the will. 
Great carelessness occurred in probating and also in recording wills. In a 
few cases some wills are recorded in the office of the Register of Deeds and 
others in the Clerk's office.

There are many errors in the spelling, not only of family but of Christian 
names, and so far as possible these errors have been corrected. Not a few of 
these errors are due to the transcribers of the wills. As far as possible, 
the original wills have been used in making these abstracts, but only a small 
portion of the originals now exist.