Mornin', I'm working with some data from Maryland [not Louisiana] and I've come across a term I need help to understand.... What does it mean to "prove" a will? Does that mean that the person whose will it is has already died by the date of the proved will... or does it mean something else? In the specific example I'm working with the date that the will was written [in the script of my ancestor] is different from the date the will was "proved." So I'm trying to extrapolate an approximate date of death from those two dates. Of course that all goes out the window if he was still alive at the time his will was proved. Thanks for helping Renée ps I'm assuming the term means the same in Louisiana as in MD, but maybe not.... maybe Napoleonic [sp.?] law is different....

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

Thanks for the excellent comments all who have responded have made regarding my query about the meaning of a will being "proved". 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. > >