PROBATE RECORDS

One place on the list of glaring records sets for a researcher is wills. Who doesn't want to find a nice clean list of heirs, property descriptions and personal inventories? Many are disappointed to find that their ancestor didn't leave one. In reality, this may be GREAT news! When someone dies without a will, known as dying intestate, and has real estate, the heirs come into possession of it as a lump. One of six children may find themselves as an owner of and undivided 1/6 of a parcel of ground. That may be fine and dandy provided they and the owners of the other 5/6 remain on good terms and no one wants out of the partnership. The process to break up the ownership situation involves one or more of the joint owners filing a lawquit known as a petition to partition with the court. It is literally a written request to part out or separate the property. It does not necessarilty indicate a falling out in the family. It is simply the process. Someone just wants to separate their share. It usually results in all of the shares being split apart and defined at that time. The great news for the researcher is that the paper trail can be long and detailed. Each heir has to be identified contacted so names are named as well as locations in many cases. Sometimes one heir may have received an advance and signed away their rights. An heir may have died and their heirs have become a party. In cases where an agreement cannot be reached, the court may order the property sold and the proceeds distributed among the heirs.

In simplistic terms, you don't know what is in the file until you know what is in the file.

Delaware County Petitions to Partition are available in digital form though Ancestry.com, however at the time of this posting, they have not yet been indexed. The same books are available at the Muncie Public Library. You can use either image set as you would a traditional book by consulting the index, but only the first one or two plaintiffs and one or two defendents are listed. The deceased land owner is not identitifed in the index and is sometimes not even mentioned in the court proceedings! If Mary Jones is suing Martha Smith et al (and others) to partition real estate left by their father William Evans, and you don't yet know the ladies' married names, what good will that do? In an effort the overcome that situation, I am working to build an every name index for this records set. Only names of family members are included. Officers of the court are not included. In cases where an attorney ad litum or guardian has been appointed and it appears they may be family, those are included just in case. If there are two Mary Joneses in the document (widow and daughter), Mary will appear only once for that file. If Mary Jones appears with more than one page number, it could be additional court sessions on the same case or a different woman with the same name. Seeing who else appears in the same pages may help you determine which is the family you are looking for. As the project moves forward, indexes may be combined.

Links to Ancestry.com require subscription. Links to Muncie Public Library take you to the card catalog entry for the appropriate microfilm. You would need to contact them directly or visit their facility at Local History & Genealogy Center at Carnegie Library, 301 E Jackson Street in Muncie. As always, if you have any questions or find any problems, please don't hesitatate to drop a line to banksofwhiteriver@gmail.com


DELAWARE COUNTY PARTITION RECORD, Volume 1, January 1852-December 1868
Available on Ancestry with subscription
Available through Muncie Public Library