Greetings.  For this in this group who did not know, the Mary Ball Washington Museum 
and Library in Lancaster County, Virginia is using a matching grant from the Virginia 
Foundation for the Humanties (http://www.virginia.edu/vfh/) to abstract the seldom-used 
Estate Books for the period of 1835-1865. 

The purpose for this project is multi-fold.  The primary objective is to identify slaves 
within this period of time, most of whom are rarely mentioned in the wills of the people 
owning them.  

But this project goes far beyond that simple objective.  It is at it's heart a complete 
compilation of all people of all races who died during this time frame.  As any student of 
genealogy and history knows, one cannot seperate one group from another without 
looking at the whole.  It has been a fascinating study of social conditions in this time 
frame, which is not one of the more popular eras of historical studies.

From out *best guess*, about 40% of whites died with a will (we have no evidence of 
Free Blacks leaving a will).  That leaves 60% who died without a will.  On top of this must 
be added that even those who died with a will leave no other _published_ record.  As 
Churchill said, *The devil is in the details*.  And it is in the Estate Books of Lancaster 
County that we find a lot of explanatory details about nearly every aspect of daily life, 
albeit taken in snapshots:  Black, White, rich, poor or somewhere inbetween, these 
records breath life into dusty books and old hand-writing.  Like every day life, some of it 
is as boring as dishwater, while yet another record comes very much alive in vivid 
technicolor.

At present, we have compiled all of the data in field notes, and are now working on 
inmputting all of this data into a data base to be uploaded to a yet-uncreated web site.  It 
will not be perfect, but where practicable we are referencing marriages, chancery suits 
and land causes into this database.  One glaring omission will be guardianship records 
which often reflect further light into the details.

Rome was not built in a day, and neither will this project.  This project is not a genealogy 
of any family, nor a yellow brick road to tracing African-American ancestors.  But,thanks 
to the support of the VFH, a good start has been made on paving the roads.

To further advance the usefulness of this data base before it is launched, I welcome any 
queries or comments on this topic.  More likely than not, many of you have much to add 
to what has been collected.

Respectfully Yours,
Craig M. Kilby
Research Director, "Expanded View" VFH Project
Mary Ball Washington Museum and Library
mbmw.org

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