Hi Bill I may be going crazy (just spend a couple hours running spell check on a 400 page document with an extensive bibliography) so check up on me, but I think in the various things I've read on wills (almost wrote bills!!!), probates, etc, that you are always told to think beyond wills. The reason is that you may get more information in the records created to process someone who died intestate than you would get from a will. To see if I'm going crazy is easy. It doesn't even cost a penny. You can find free articles on the Internet or sub to the ancestry daily diatribe to daily learn a little more. You may not have found a will for the wife because he disposed of his property when he died. She may have left a will if she herself owned significat goods when she died like dower property. >Would the prothonotary's office or the recorder of wills office in Allegheny >County be the appropriate place to look, and what would I be looking for? Well if you like to wait a long time to get information and have to deal with untrained clerks it's fine. Explain to me why you won't check the LDS catalog under PA Probates and PA Allegheny to see what's filmed or published ina book?? It's fast, it's easy. The court where you search for these records varies with the colony or state. In colonial times in PA it was the orphans court, but donno for your time. If I wanted to know I'd search the LDS free state guide for PA. Or use www.usgenweb.com. I have learned (the hard way) that my brain can't hold all the info, so I'd better check before I assume I know where to look, even if I think I know, because sometimes I'm WRONG. It doesn't much matter here, but a paying customer isn't going to like to hear I spent $200 searching the wrong court <grin>! So check. Or believe someone who tells you on an internet list -- maybe they are emailing from an Alzheimers Unit. So I hate to steer you wrong -- but I think you need the Orphan's Courts Records. Go to www.familysearch.org, click on catalog, navigate to PA Allegheny County, then to Probates. Find some estate records. Click. What court is the author? I'd do this but I gotta complete some work today and it's probably a good thing for you to try. A lot of the early PA criminal records are published in Cumberland, and so are the VA ones. Augusta County (OLD Augusta co) is published in Chalkley (Chronicles of the Scotch-Irish). They can help a lot. You can write a letter to the court clerk who wasn't trained to read these 18th century records and who was probably laid off last week (and replaced by a 19 year old who gets paid $7.50 an hour) or you can see if they were published with a nice index. If you find something interesting, then go there or write a letter about a specific document. That way when y ou do go to the facility, you can examine the records there that you can't get elsewhere. Well back to going crazy. Word is not my friend, I have learned.... Linda ________________________________________________________________ Sent via the WebMail system at mail.fea.net