Background Information for the Probate Court Records Finding Aid

This finding aid is an outcome of the 1999-2000 grant funded by the Historical Repositories Grant Program of the Georgia Historical Records Advisory Board. The main objectives of that project were to find, clean, sort, inventory, and arrange the Probate Court records of Athens-Clarke County as well as to develop a finding aid to easily locate the information. The original finding aid is a paper document with copies located in The Athens-Clarke County Probate Court and the Heritage Room of the Athens-Clarke County Library. The reports contained in the finding aid were generated from a database that was developed as part of the project. The web version was adapted from the database reports and created with assistance from the Clarke-Oconee Genealogical Society.

Box Inventory & Numbering
A box inventory is provided which lists location information and microfilm information where available. From this inventory, a list of the folders found within each box can be accessed by clicking on the box number. These records can be searched by surname from the Estate and Guardianship Records page. Boxes were numbered in the following way:

• 1 - 47 are estate papers that were processed during this project (not microfilmed)
• 101 - 112 are estate papers previously processed and microfilmed
• 201 - 209 are marriage records
• 301 - 304 are miscellaneous records

Arrangements

Categories

Each book or document is assigned to a category (e.g., annual returns book, boxed estate records) to facilitate the organization of the information.

Books

The book title reflects what is on the spine or the first pages of the book if the spine is missing. Books of the same type may have different names (for example, marriage record books are called Marriage Book, Marriage Licenses, or Marriage Record). If there is no title, the field contains a description of the book's contents. Reports in the printed finding aid and this website give the location of the original book as well as the location of microfilm or microprint copies.

Estate and Guardianship Papers

The 42 boxes (50 after processing) of estate, guardianship, marriage, and miscellaneous papers were sorted, arranged, and inventoried by 33 volunteers over a 10-month period. An additional 21 boxes of previously arranged estate, marriage, and miscellaneous papers were moved to acid-free boxes. Information from all of the estate papers was entered into the database and is part of the finding aid. Miscellaneous and marriage information is included in the database only at the box level. In other words, if you are looking for a marriage license for a particular surname, you must look in the box to see if that particular surname is there.

Each estate / guardianship file consists of one or more folders that are filed alphabetically by surname of the deceased or ward. Those estate papers arranged in prior years have been microfilmed (boxes 101 to 112). The papers arranged as part of this project have not yet been microfilmed (April 2003, boxes 1 to 47). It is possible that papers for the same person are located in both groups. That is why you may see different box and folder numbers for the same person in the finding aid. The number of items in the folder is noted for the non-microfilmed papers only.