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Hancock County Probate Records
Thanks to the continued awareness of employees at the County Clerk’s office, two other original documents have been found. Both of these were dated beginning in 1853.
One book is partly devoted to Treasurer’s reports of the Hancock County Board of Police and other organizations, and partly for reports of the Hancock County Probate Court. It numbers, in total, 208 pages.
The second is entirely devoted to the minutes of the County Probate Court, covering no less than 767 pages.
These constitute an important addition to the original Police Court Records previously reported, which had been rescued from a private collection. That document has now been turned over to the County Clerk. It is the subject of an article on this website called “Minutes of Hancock County’s Police Court, 1863-1866.”
The dating of the two newly discovered books is the same as that of Deed Books A and B. This is not by coincidence. A reader may need to know that a courthouse fire in Gainesville occurred in 1853, destroying many county records. A serious attempt was made afterwards to record both deeds and probate records from that date. However, it is clear that in the case of the deed records, many . documents were re-recordings of earlier transactions.
This is not so for the probate records. Most of the first 300 pages of the total 767 are dated 1853. They do not include any wording indicating they are “re-recordings” as in the case of deed reentries. Still, that may be a reasonable assumption in that there were so many dated 1853. As the next 400 pages span the years 1854 through 1859, it is evident that the average entries per year would have been much lower
It should be noted that where there are large gaps in page numbers it is usually because of several records in succession bearing upon the same matter.