Houston Estate Planning and Elder Law Attorney Blog
Historical wills can offer a window into the past and provide researchers a new perspective on history. Today, old wills for such luminary figures as Herman Melville, Samuel Morse, J.P. Morgan and many other historical figures, can be easily accessed on the web.
The well-known genealogical website, Ancestry.com, spent two and half years scanning 170 million pages of old wills and probate records, and put them in an online database.
While many other countries have previously placed the contents of old wills online, this is a first in the United States on this large of a scale. This development appeared in a recent CNN article, "Paul Revere, J.P. Morgan wills among millions now online."