1. Each volume is projected to cover a group of counties that formed, in essence, a "neighborhood" -- the kind of geographic area in which our ancestors and their extended families are likely to have lived irrespective of county boundaries that required dispersal of their probate (and other) records among several courthouses. Volume 1 includes the central Northern Neck counties and arranges decedents' names in one alphabet, allowing a researcher to collect citations for everybody of a given surname in the area with relative ease [Note: One still has to search all spellings of the surname, of course: Holmes, Homes, Hoomes, for example.]. For example: the probate records in Arlington, Fauquier, King George, and Prince William for decedents surnamed Page are gathered together in this volume but would be in different books had Pippenger chosen an alphabetical rather than geographical county-publishing scheme. All of the Pages, of course, may not have belonged to the same family, but surely the chances are great that Mann Page, whose Arlington will was probated in 1820, was closely related to Mann Page, whose King George administration bond was filed in 1843. In this volume, the gentlemen's names follow each other.

2. Efforts to compile a family's history are often inhibited by missing censuses and "burned"counties' absent records. As Virginia researchers know, carefully sifting the records of other counties in which the family (or members of it) may have lived can fill the gaps. When completed, the Index to Virginia Estates series will be an invaluable "short-cut" aid, indicating which adjoining or nearby counties might warrant this kind of painstaking investigation.

3. Useful as is Clayton Torrence's classic work, Virginia Wills and Administrations, 1832-1800, it gives no directions to where within a county's record books a particular will, inventory, and/or administration bond might be located [Note: Corrections, additions, and source citations for Torrence's volume are listed on the Library of Virginia's website at ]. The Index to Virginia Estates series, unlike Torrence's book, provides precise directions to the relevant registration book-and-page and indicates whether unbound originals might be found at the Library of Virginia and/or the county courthouse. Pippenger also provides individual county keys to the record-book titles and the abbreviations for each that he used in the index. Virginia researchers, familiar with the often frustrating fact that the names and contents of record books vary from county to county and time-period to time-period, will find this feature particularly helpful.

4. Pippenger searched out all the parts of an estate settlement and included citations to each of them, thereby providing ready access to additional data that can be found in recorded inventories, bonds, appraisements, and so forth. William Hepburn's Arlington estate is a case in point: his 1817-probated will is listed, along with the inventory and sale of his estate that year and estate accounts, 1818-1822. The guardian accounts and petitions for his children, Julia Ann Eliza, Letitia, and Moses, are also listed individually, but all in one place. What a find!

So much is provided in the Index, in fact, that one hesitates to request more -- but it would be helpful if future volumes included brief notes on each county's formation date and parentage.

In sum: does this book (and those that follow it in the series) belong on the shelves of every genealogist with an interest in Virginia ancestry? Absolutely! Academic historians, demographers, and social scientists will undoubtedly greet this publication with delight as well.

Reprinted from The Virginia Genealogical Society Newsletter, June 2001, page 13.

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