A Few Probate Packets of South Carolina Cook families

A hot topic of the Cook/Putman researchers lately has been trying to determine if the Cook and Putman families knew each other prior to their arrival in Williamson Co. TN.  The Putmans were in Union Co. SC.  With the rain today..it just made sense to use the time to see what Cook families I could find in the Union Co SC area.  I didn't find any obvious connection to my Cooks but I really enjoyed reading over them..

Several of these Cook families were Quaker Families.  The estate inventories provide a great deal of information about the deceased as well as listing the names of those who purchased items.  I enjoyed the beautiful writing on some of the pages.  If these don't interest you, go to the main FamilySearch site and find a state in which your ancestors lived and see what is available for the counties in which your families lived.

The SC Probate files at FamilySearch  aren't searchable however I found an index and then used that to navigate to the Cook images.  

Union Co SC

• Probate Records of Isaac Cook--Box 1 Packet 49  Year 1794--Images 308-314 of 416 
• Probate Records of John Cook---Box 2 Packet 43 Year 1798---Images 334-344 of 476
• Probate of Robert Cook-----Box 4 Packet 47  Year 1808----Images  354-364  of 432 

York Co SC 

• Probate James Cook--------Case 55 File 2451  Year 1795?---Images 68-71 of 417

While reading over the estate inventories, you might find tools with which you are unfamiliar.  There were several that I didn't recognize and too some that I just wanted to see.  There are several books at Google Books that will help identify tools.  I found The Illustrated Sheffield List to be very helpful and it is available free.  Most of the items that I was unfamiliar with had to do with horses.  In the inventory of Isaac Cook's estate there was a copy of Barkley's Apology as well as a Bible.

There are many State probate documents available at FamilySearch.  Most of the ones I have found aren't searchable but are browsable.  A great deal of these records have a  scanned index and once you find that you can use that to find the surnames of interests within the browsable probate documents.