Hi there! While some (or even a lot) of Freetown records may be at Fall River, the VAST majority of material for pre-1775 (you're period) are at the Bristol County Courthouse, Taunton, MA. These records will also encompass material regarding what is now Tiverton RI because before 1742 [??] it was part of Bristol Co., MA and Plymouth Colony before that. PROBATE: These are at the Courthouse. You can do a lot through the mail, but before going after the "deeper" stuff, you should have ransacked & pillaged both volumes of Abstracts of Bristol Co. [MA] Records. published in the late 1980s & early 1990s. Sadly, both are now out of print. Try a Google or eBay search or contact Tuttle's in VT IF you can't find them in a decent research library near where you live or can't get them on interlibrary loan. Several people on this list, including myself, have copies and will, I'm sure, do limited look-ups. This is necessary because you'll want to maximize your time on the FILE PAPERS. File papers are all the supporting material on the estate filed with the court. The amount & quality varies in the extreme, from zilch where there should be a lot to a ton of quality material. If the court was actually given the original will and KEPT it, it'll be in File, as will Bonds on Executors, Guardian Appointments, Executors returns & just odds & ends. You access these by giving the clerk a slip saying, for instance, "Ralph Pain, Freetown, 1727". (Post-1750 things start getting numbers that are keyed to the "formal" order of recorded doucments in the bound volumes.) As Rounds' ABSTRACTS (see above) are ABSTRACTS of the formally recorded material, you may still want to have copies of the complete bound documents. You can either order them through the clerks in Probate or you can see if those volumes are part of the LDS's series of MA microfilmed material and order them through your local LDS FHL center. So armed with all this pre-work work, you'll then be able to give the File Papers (if any exist, of course, for your Hill & collateral families) the attention & time they deserve. ALL THIS MATERIAL IS PHOTOCOPIABLE -- AND IS NOT, I repeat NOT, on the Mormon microfilms. The above doesn't quite exhaust the riches of Probate but you've now seen the big picture. DEEDS: Probate is on the second floor. Deeds is on the first & in the basement. Unlike Probate, Deeds does NOT have anything like File Papers for the pre-1750 period. What's in the bound volumes is what you get. There are indexes as you'd expect for Grantors & Grantees at the beginning of the volumes. I never found them to be inaccurate. But the very early indexes usually do not give you the town; just who bought & who sold. Town ifnromation is usually noted in the outside margins of a page, if noted at all other than in the document. An important feature of a deed is who witnessed it. Sometimes this will help establish that So&So the witness was still alive at such&such a time. To do that kind of search, you just have to be able to sit there & flip & eyeball the pages. Deeds also has a series of pre-1800 maps that can help orient you to Assonet/Freetown. Note that Freetown has ALWAYS though of itself as two parts - Assonet (by the river & where the town hall is) and East Freetown which has been orientd to the nieghboring communities of Middleboro, etc. Were Deeds microfilmed? I'm not sure, but the clerks will photocopy what you need. I mostly just took notes. CAVEAT: Probates & Deeds at Mass. Archives, Columbia Point, Boston. As part of a NECESSARY action to preserve county court material, a LOT of material was moved to said archives. This was mostly County Court Records, such as General Sessions of the Peacwe and Common Pleas. Potential sources of great informational value if you know whow to use them. (And with usually better indexes than Probate.) But some Probate went along, too. However, some odd things got left behind & I'm not sure what the end date was. Call Probate at Bristol first and then the MA. Why call both? You're likely to be told two slightly different things. Its just best to know what each thinks they have. Working conditions are easier at the courthouse because they're in a use mode. The Archives is, of course, in a you-must-not-touch mode. For the Archives, bring PC and plenty of pencils. MASS ARCHIVES You'll want to go here anyways because the Mormons donated most of the Massachusetts microfilms they made to it. So, ALL the counties are there as well as whatever town records they'd gotten around to filming up to the point of the donation. Plus, if you have any 19th century MA work to do, this is where ALL the post-1849 VR records are "officially". In addition, the Archives manages all the court records alluded to above. Checking the county indexes for civil and criminal case participants is something you're better off doing in person. It is also has the repository of the "famous" Massachusetts Archives bound volumes (available now ONLY on microfilm) & its highly useful, though not complete, card index to the same, which is available nowhere else. OLD COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY You may already be a member. Mostly useful for the 19th century & on, but many people, such as I, donate updates on their family history research to them. They might have a Hill compilation you've not seen. These are four of the hotspots but more importantly, these are the reasons why you should consider doing research there. Please feel free to email directly, if you've any more specific questions. And do remember that you can run "Freetown" & "Hill" as search words through the MABRISTO post archive! Bob Gerrity P. O. Box 2814 Acton, MA 01720 _________________________________________________________________ STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail