Mr Research® has been especially industrious this week. He found, online, the Last Will And Testaments of some of our key relatives. They were written (copied) in long-hand into ledger books and kept in Morrison county, I assume. (Part of the fun of doing genealogy with Larry is that I often don't know his sources till much later ☺) He emailed screen captures of Paul Hesch, our great grandfather, who died in 1900; his wife Mary Otremba Hesch, who died in 1917; and Paul's brother Anton Hesch, who died in 1911, in Agram township. Yes, we have a rough copy of Paul's will here on HH, and some info about Anton's probate hearing, but these are the official records. Funny, I always thought wills were kept in envelopes in lawyers' safes, and read dramatically to the potential heirs in an elegant library somewhere, like on Perry Mason...but no, I guess not.
Anyway, Larry said he found more family wills, so we'll see those soon. In the meantime, here's the book copy of Paul's dictated original:
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| Paul Hesch's Will, dictated on his death bed in August 1900. |
Great uncle Anton's Will (left) and probate, settled in January, 1912.
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| The Will and probate of Mary (Otremba) Hesch, who died in 1917.
I don't understand the probate process, but wait, lets check the internet:
"Probate is the court-supervised process of gathering a deceased person's assets and distributing them to creditors and inheritors". Ok, Anton's Will and Mary's Will were probated, but not Paul's? The whole legal-death system was still being built in 1900, so that's probably it ☺ |
YAY, LARRY!
