I'm afraid I must disagree with your assumption about the number of people with wills.  Here's why: You can't compare the population at a stated point--1900 in this case--with the population over the period from 1866 to 1923.  The latter will of course be far larger, even accounting for duplication from year to year.  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The population at any point, including 1900, included many children.  This was an era of large families--scan the census.  These children did not have wills.  The number of children in the population would diminish the number of potential wills by a third, conservatively.------------------ Lastly, the 1,610,840 images in the Kings County Estate Files do not correlate with 1,610,840 individuals.  Each of the individuals has a minimum of four images.  Many individuals have 10, 20 or more images.  That too cuts down the number of potential wills considerably. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I stand by my statement that statistics indicate that most people did not have wills in that era. -------------------------------------- Virginia -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   From: Robert Pieterse <[email protected]>   In  1900  the  population  of  Brooklyn  was   | | 1,166,582  | New York, Kings County Estate Files, 1866-1923  contain  Browse through 1,610,840 images  To  me  that  does  not  support   your  comment I would think most people did not have wills.    -----Original Message----- From: VLB via <[email protected]> I would think most people did not have wills.  They just did not have much to leave and most of them just handed it over to family, it seems, without involving the courts. If you look at the number of wills on familysearch.org compared to the population of NYC, including Brooklyn, the latter vastly outnumbers the former.