Ohio, Wyandot County Probate Court, "General and Judgment Index" to Estates, Guardianships, Assignments and Trusts — the volume filmed as "Estate index 1845-1900 vol 1-2", volume 1 (years 1845-1883), the complete "Co" surname block at book pages 50-55, with the printed first-two-letters key table at page 49; FamilySearch DGS 5871537 (film 905937), images 40-47.

What this document records

What this volume is

A single county-wide index to the WHOLE probate series, not to one book — its printed column heads are "ESTATE, WARD, ASSIGNOR, ETC. — Surname · Given Name", "ADMINISTRATOR, EXECUTOR, GUARDIAN, ASSIGNEE OR TRUSTEE", "Adm'r, Ex'r, G'd'n, Etc.", "Number of Case", "NATURE OF CASE OR PROCEEDING", "DOCKET No. / Page", and then across the facing leaf "Date of Final Order or Judgment", "JOURNAL No./Page", "RECORD No./Page", "Am't of Judgm't or Costs", "Cost Record No./Page", "No. of Execution" and "Execution Docket No./Page". So one row tells you every proceeding an estate generated and where each one is recorded — appointment, inventory, petition to sell real estate, partial accounts, final account, settlement, each with its docket and journal citation. On the specimen pages such entries are written out in full (e.g. for one Corbin estate: "Appointment / Inventory / Petition to Sell Real Estate / Final Account / .. Settlement", docket 1 page 128). This is the master key to Wyandot County probate, and it is a better starting point than any single series.

The printed key table verbatim

The volume tells you how to use it, on every page. A printed table heads each page, followed by: "THE ABOVE TABLE Subdivides the names into GROUPS by the FIRST TWO LETTERS of the SURNAME. The figures give the page of this Index on which the name is written." For C the figures are: Ca … 37 · Ce/i … 42 · h … 45 · l … 47 · o … 50 · r … 58 · u/y … 61. ⇒ every "Co" surname in the county is on pages 50 to 57, and every "Cr" surname from 58. A footnote at the foot of the table reads "Peculiarly spelled names not above classified, Page 315." This is a far better navigational device than the Cott deed-index buff sheets ([K.103]), because it is printed on every page rather than filed once before each letter tab, and it gives an exact page rather than a bracket to interpolate within.

The complete co block surnames verbatim

All six written pages of the "Co" block, every surname, in the order written. The order is CHRONOLOGICAL, not alphabetical — the first two letters are the only sort, so entries were added as cases were opened. That is why the block must be read in full rather than scanned to the point where "Cooper" would fall. Page 50 — Cover · Cowdry · Corbin · Cordray · Cozier · Cole · Cook · Cooley Page 51 — Cowdery · Conaghan · Cole · Conghan · Covell · Cover · Conaghan · Conaghan · Covell Page 52 — Covell · Cole · Cole · Corfman · Coon Jr. · Coons · Coon Sr. · Corfman · Coon Page 53 — Cochenour · Corfman · Covell · Covell · Cook · Coon · Cook · Cook · Corfman Page 54 — Cole · Cordray · Cozier · Cozier · Couchenour · Cochenour · Cochenour · Cover · Cox Page 55 — Cowgill · Cook · Cowgill · Coil · Cook · Compton et al. — then the page trails off blank, which is what one expects of the last written page of a group. Fifty-two entries; nineteen distinct surnames; not one Cooper.

The null and exactly how far it reaches

NO COOPER OF ANY GIVEN NAME APPEARS IN THE WYANDOT COUNTY GENERAL PROBATE INDEX, VOLUME 1 (1845-1883). And the boundary is established rather than assumed, which is the point. Three things fix it: (1) the volume's own printed key table assigns "Co" to pages 50-57; (2) pages 50-55 are the only written pages — page 55 trails off blank mid-page; (3) film image 47 carries a "BLANK PAGES" filmer's placard followed immediately by the "Cr" surnames (Crossen, Cross, Crouse, Crawford, Creger, Cram), so pages 56-57 were blank and skipped. ⇒ there is no unread page on which a Cooper could be hiding. Why this null is worth much more than the earlier ones. The previous Wyandot probate nulls were each against one series — administrators' bonds v. 1, executors' bonds v. A1, final record v. 3 and v. 4. This index covers estates, guardianships, assignments AND trusts together, across the whole court, so a single null does the work of all of them and of the series nobody has opened. ⇒ For Samuel Cooper Samuel Cooper (d. 1871) and Sarah (d. 1872) the answer is now firm: no probate proceeding of any kind was opened in Wyandot County. Which is a real finding, not a dead end — an intestate whose estate is never administered is normally one with no personal estate worth administering and no creditor pressing, and [K.102] shows Samuel had already sold his last recorded parcel in 1866. It also means the heirs were never enumerated by a court, so this line of attack on the parentage question is closed and the effort belongs elsewhere.

Three limits on the null that must travel with it

1. VOLUME 1 ONLY, i.e. 1845-1883. The target card at image 4 reads "MICROFILMED BY THE GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY SALT LAKE CITY UTAH AT COUNTY COURTHOUSE UPPER SANDUSKY OHIO · VOLUME 1 · YEARS 1845 1883". ⇒ it says nothing about G. G. Cooper (1886) — already found by another route at [A.189] — or about John Cooper (d. 1899), whose case [K.102] proves exists. Those are in volume 2, unread. See todo:. 2. SPELLING. The index files by the first two letters, so Couper, Cowper and Coper would all still fall in the "Co" block and are covered — but "Kooper" would sit under K, and the printed footnote "Peculiarly spelled names not above classified, Page 315" means an oddly-spelled entry could have been filed there instead. Page 315 has not been read. 3. IT IS AN INDEX. A clerk who failed to index a case leaves no trace here. The null is strong because this index governs the whole court, not because indexes are infallible.

The reel arithmetic does not interpolate and why

DO NOT INTERPOLATE ON THIS REEL. The frame-to-page relation is locally clean and globally broken, and that is worth knowing before anyone tries. Locally it is exact: image 40 = page 49 and image 41 = page 50, consecutive frames for consecutive pages, so one frame photographs one whole index page (the printed columns run across both leaves of the opening, and the page number sits at the outer top corner of the left leaf). Globally it fails: image 409 is page 250. From image 41 to 409 is 368 frames for only 200 pages — i.e. more frames than pages, which blank-page skipping can only make fewer. ⇒ either frames are re-shot, or — much more likely — image 409 belongs to VOLUME 2, a second book whose pages start again at 1 and which uses the identical printed form (its key table is character-for-character the same, including Co … 50). And no END/BEGIN placard marks the join. Images 271-360, 381-410 and 432-464 were all scanned in the thumbnail grid: continuous written pages throughout, with the first placards at 465-467 (a typed card, END, END OF ROLL). So the two volumes were filmed straight through. ⇒ volume 2's first frame is unlocated, and until it is, no page on this reel can be reached by interpolation — only by the key table plus a probe. The useful corollary: because the form is identical, volume 2's "Co" block will also be at its own pages 50-57. So finding volume 2's first frame is the whole task; the page number is already known.