Dona, This may be a "guy thing". A man's gun is part of his being and very essence. I am sure it would be considered a valued possession and, I assume, handed down to the eldest son. I know this was the situation in my family and we are pretty "typical". It would have great symbolic value as a means of protection of a man's family. Now that I think of it, I have never seen a mention of a "willed hound". This was a great question, but what else would one expect from our brother, Wetmore. William R. Randall A Proud RootsWeb Contributor =================================================== Beebe, Cranmer, Hale, Lamb, RANDALL, Roberts and Wightman families in Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Rhode Island Randall Web Page: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~randall [email protected] wrote: > > I haven't come across guns in wills, either, but perhaps they didn't consider them part of the household goods or "willable" property. Most of the time you also don't see personal clothing being willed, though the pots and pans ARE. Strange, perhaps, to us these days. Maybe the men gave the guns to their sons at some point before their death? > > Dona Ritchie > > ==== CTMIDDLE Mailing List ==== > You can search the archives for the list at > http://searches.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/listsearch.pl?list=CTMIDDLE > > ============================== > To join Ancestry.com and access our 1.2 billion online genealogy records, go to: > http://www.ancestry.com/rd/redir.asp?targetid=571&sourceid=1237