Tom King sent me a messsage about the Virginia Wills book and I asked him if I could forward it to this site. He agreed but asked me to correct a typo in it that says "Henry Harris died in 1751". He said it should be 1755. I tried but it would not let me change a message I had received, so I had to add it this way. Eleanor Homewood ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tom King" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2008 7:05 AM Subject: Torrence Wills > > > > Be careful of what the book lists as Harris names. I've found several > that upon looking at the actual records show > a small 's' above the last letter in Harris. This was a common clerk's > abreviation for Harrison. I've looked at the > deed records and other records and found there were mentions of the > Harrison named as Harris in Torrence' book while > there was no mention of any Harris by that name. I would expect this to be > the case for other names that may have a > 'son' after their name as written in this book. This has been overlooked > by many of those that have abstracted the > actual wills, so there are lots of published Harris will abstractions that > are really for Harrison. People blindly > relie on these abstracts without ever checking the actual records, so a > lot of false Harris families get generated > and merged into actual lines when no such Harris family ever existed. Such > was the case of my own ancestor Henry Harris > who Torrence lists as dying in 1751 when I have many records showing him > still alive through 1779. Some of the abstractors > have noticed the superscript 's' and just added it to the name so it > became Harriss when it should be Harrison. > > Tom King > > > No virus found in this incoming message. > Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com Version: 8.0.138 / Virus Database: > 270.5.6/1579 - Release Date: 7/29/2008 6:43 AM > > >