In a message dated 3/16/2005 3:35:31 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, juanita2@cox.net writes: Kathie, It'd be hard to figure out why a person was written out of a Will unless you found out everything that was going on in their life @ the time. My husband's gr grandfather married in one town in NC back in the early 1800's...but no divorce record was found although there could have been. A few towns away we found him living with another woman with several children, all with his surname. When the father of the new "wife" drew up his Will he purposely excluded his daughter as well as all her children. No reason why, but we suspected it may not have been a legal marriage or that our gr grandfather and his "father-in-law" had an unnamed disagreement over something. The woman was named as the deceased's daughter and given $1.00 with the statement he'd excluded her children. You might check into everything you can find about your gr gr grandfather & his mother to see if there might have been a disagreement - perhaps over land or even his marriage. Have you looked at Civil Court records to see if there may have been suits filed for some reason between the two of them? Civil Court records can be revealing. I'd never have found my grandmother's adoption unless her adoptive parents had filed for divorce. I saw their names in the court records in IA and requested a copy of all papers in the case file and in them was testimony that their daughter (naming my grandmother) had been adopted. juanita My great-great grandfather fathered 19 children (by four different wives). In his will he left property or money to only seven. In researching land records, however, I found that he had purchased, or helped to purchase, land during his lifetime for each of those not mentioned in the will. In other words he only took care of the children in his will who had not received property from him during his lifetime. Neil