If you aren't into family history (why are you reading this blog?) you might not understand the awe I felt at being handed a folder at the Stewart Bell, Jr. Archives at the Handley Regional Library in Winchester, Virginia that contained the original handwritten will of my great-great-great-great-great grandfather George Bowman. OMG! The librarian was kind enough to put it in a protective cover to make photocopying it easier. Since everything is copyrighted, it is copied on special paper. You know what? I don't care. I am thrilled to own a photocopy that I made myself. The will was written in 1764 and a codicil added to it in 1766 with a provision regarding his daughter, Mary Bowman Stephens.
The will was proved in 1768. George was the son-in-law of Joist Hite and one of the settlers who came to the Shenandoah Valley in 1732.
Copyright 2011, ACK for Gene Notes
I totally get your thrill! Seeing an ancestor's handwriting brings a part of them alive -- and back to 1764! I recently discovered the actual handwritten records from the 1700s in a Gerstheim (Alsace) church microfilm file of my ancestor's marriage and then birth of the child who then departed at less than a year in 1770 from Gerstheim to Hungary (now Romania) whence my grandparents emigrated to America 100 years ago, 1911.
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