It helps Very Much I can now figure out that he died sometime between when he wrote the will in 1702 and when the will was proved in 1703! Thanks! R Isabel wrote: > Renee, > For a will be be "proved", the person who wrote the will has to be dead. This is just a legal term to validate or "prove" that the will was indeed written by the deceased. Holographic wills are valid in Arkansas, but this may be something that is not allowed in other states or may have been allowed in other time periods but are no longer permitted. Depending on the time period and the size of the city, you may find the actual date of death in the local newspaper. Hopefully, the newspaper will have been microfilmed. I have used this method to get exact dates in Georgia and Ala. I would assume that Maryland would have death notices listed in the major city newspapers of the time. Sometimes I just found that "Mary Smith died at her home on Tues. inst". Weekly newspapers have the date of the paper, so you just have to figure out the date for Tues. > > Another clue: I have found Kentucky marriages listed in the Nashville, TN newspaper. Many people from TN moved on to KY, so it was a common practice to publish Ky information in the area where the people had lived before. Migration pattern are important in genealogy. Look for the largest city newspaper in the MD area where your ancestor lived. You might just luck out. > In Georgia I was able to not only find out the date of death but the cause. I was at a dead end on one of Wayne's ancestors. He just disappeared. Knowing that he had a brother who had a gold mine in Dalonega, Ga. I went to Dalonega to research. It turns out that besides owning the Pigeon Roost mining Company, Milton Gathright owned the paper in Dalonega. I went to the library and find a nice family write up on Milton's dead brother, who died after being kicked by a horse on his homestead in rural Ga. Newspapers can be my gold mine many of times. Yes, they are time consuming because most are not indexed. > Hope this helps you, > Isabel >