Hello Everyone, This is a footnote to Paul's comments on requirements for notifying the court of a death. Alot of us interested in family history tend to get fixated on getting correct dates, and extremely bothered when there are discrepancies. At this point in my research, I do not count myself among them, especially if we are talking about a discrepancy of four days or such. But I do like to have a ballpark. However, I have a 4g grandfather, James Williams, who died 1840s in Cole (now Moniteau Co. Mo). In his probate packet that was thankfully filmed by the LDS, there is the Dr's account of the money due him from the estate. It has charges for visits and medicines several days running, then ends. The medicines I've been advised are those that would be given for pneumonia or similar disease. Since the visits are everyday, then abruptly end, we estimate that he died very shortly thereafter, within one or two days. So if you are lucky enough to find probate information with all sorts of bits of papers backing up the credits and debits, look for a Dr's bill to pin down a death date. As a footnote, this particular ancestor is a lesson for another research strategy. When James Williams died, what is now Moniteau Co., was then Cole Co. Missouri. He had ten children, and probably three of them were underage. It appears that quickly there was agreement among the others to "sell" their rights to their father's land to one of the brother's via quit claim deed. He paid them each $50 for their renunciation of any claims (yeah Paul, I know I am being imprecise here). I have copies of all of the deeds and dower releases, which were executed over a series of years, the majority reading "of Cole County". However, while the initial appointment of administrators and appraisers appear in the Cole Co. court book, the deeds were filed and entered in the deed book en masse in Moniteau several years later after the youngest child had come of age. That is also where the entire probate package is filed, including the statement of heirs, inventory, sale, etc., all of which read "Cole County". None of these documents are found in Cole Co. probate files, just notations on the inventory (taken lickity split), the sale (done lickity split) in Cole Co. court minutes. FYI, if I remember correctly, Paul feels that the lawyers here did not behave correctly, particularly in holding all the deeds back. FYI, I never would probably have found this James Williams, without a Civil War pension record of my 3g aunt who just happened to be born there and outlived her husband long enough to file for a widow's pension, because it isn't in his file. Her father, my 3g gand father Thomas L. Williams was born in Cocke Co, TN. After his father died he bounced to Moniteau for a few years, then Texas for a few years (including 1850 where I never thought to look for him till I looked at birth places of his neighbors' children in his next stop), then Arkansas and finally SW Mo. Also, the recording of places can be a problem. I have a friend with a 3g uncle who died in a TB Sanitorium in Colorado, but whose residence was Greene Co. Mo. A genealogy she received corretly put the place of death in the county and state of Colorado, but there was no family history to go with it, and thus she spent time searching the Colorado county records. A second and more serious example comes from the exclusive use of Quaker MM records (such as in Hinshaw's Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy), to conclude that any births, deaths or marriages record in a particular monthly meeting, actually occured in that immediate location. The Cane Creek MM in NC is my favorite example at this URL, but there could also be similar situations in VA (Bedford Co. comes to mind): http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/read/QUAKER-ROOTS/2004-01/1074998963 Best Regards, Janet Hunter To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe please see the instructions at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-roots.html