I am hoping someone familiar with SE PA (spec. Lebanon/Lancaster/Berks) county wills of the 1800s that can help me. I recently photographed and copied some wills and found some curious idiosyncrasies. I had assumed any will in "the vault", as it were, would be an original. I noticed in one case that a will in its microfilmed copy was not in the same handwriting and with the same signature as the "hard copy" in the file. I also noticed that the seals for this particular will varied, with the microfilmed copy having the word "seal" surrounded by a squiggly line forming a circle, and the "hard copy" with a drawn seal and the letters "LS". Other wills had either a handwritten squiggly circle with the letters "LS" or an actual stamp with the letters LS, or just the word "seal" in the drawn circle. Some wills I consider to be originals because there is an "appearance" of an authentic signature (such as the handwriting differing from that of the text and/or the distinction of apparent training in German script). Two wills are from different families, so the initials "LS" within the seal don't seem to have familial significance as I expected; perhaps the seal belonged to any attorney or other officer of the court drawing up a will, kind of like today's notary seal? In one case the seal has a red background (maybe wax) with a cut out of a multi-tipped star attached over the red area and the letters written in the center of the star. Does anyone know what LS stands for? Is it just coincidence that these seals appear on the wills with likely original signatures, or if not, what about those wills that also have strikingly different signatures from the text, but with only the squiggly circle and the word "seal"? Is this the convention used when the maker of a will didn't have their own seal or is it a convention for the copies of originals, but what about the distinctive signature on these, are they likely just a clerk's affected attempt at making a signature? These signatures are online (in PDF format, use bookmark view)- http://www.redshift.com/~jblight/willsign.pdf for anyone interested or who can help me evaluate some degree of most likely authentic (if that is possible?) and I will post them to my web site, but thought I'd put out a feeler or two first. Can anyone point me in the direction of a 19th century "wills" expert or list group? Thank-you - JL