Source Information

Ancestry.com. Calendar of Delaware Wills, New Castle County, 1682-1800 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2002.
Original data: A Calendar of Delaware Wills New Castle County 1682-1800. New York, NY, USA: Frederick H. Hitchcock, 1911.

About Calendar of Delaware Wills, New Castle County, 1682-1800

This database is a compilation of wills from New Castle County, Delaware from 1682-1800. The records were abstracted and compiled by the Historical Research Committee of the Colonial Dames of Delaware. The wills include information on names, dates, places, relationships, and other important clues for family history research.

In preparing these wills the Colonial Dames of Delaware research committee worked on the original wills as far as they existed in the Register's office and in the original Record of Probate where the wills were missing. According to the committee, "Abstracts have been made of many wills, which, because of technical irregularities, were not probated, and consequently are not matters of record. The genealogical data thus presented gives the volume a unique advantage. For a period of years, in the early life of this Colony the law did not require that the probated wills filed in the Register's office should be recorded. Because of this, genealogists, and others interested in research work, were permitted to use the original wills, with the natural result that many were carried away, and many others suffered destruction or defacement from constant and careless handling."

Abbreviations found in the text are as follows:

Appoquinimink Appo.
Brandywine B'wine
Christiana Chris.
Mill Creek Mill Crk.
New Castle N.C.
Pencader Pen.
Red Lion Red Lion
St. Georges St. Geo.
White Clay Creek W. Clay Crk.

Other abbreviations include:

Administered Adm.
Borough Bor.
Codicil Dec'd
Daughter Dau.
Estate Est.
Executor Exc.
Miscellaneous Misc.
Nuncupative Nunc.
Wilmington Wil.