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 2, book page 53: the index row for the estate of G. G. Cooper, case 732, box 81, with its six proceedings and their Record citations; and the complete "Co" block at pages 50-55. FamilySearch DGS 5871537 images 255-260.

What this document records

The cooper row verbatim

Volume 2, page 53, second row — the whole row, field by field: | printed column | what it holds | |---|---| | ESTATE, WARD, ASSIGNOR — Surname | Cooper | | Given Name | G. G. | | ADMINISTRATOR, EXECUTOR, GUARDIAN… | C. J. Yentzer see the conflict below | | Adm'r, Ex'r, G'd'n, Etc. | Admr. | | Number of Case | Box 81 · Case 732 | | NATURE OF CASE OR PROCEEDING | Appointment · Inventory · Sale Bill · Sale of Real Estate · Final Account · Distributive [Account] | | DOCKET No./Page | Adm[r] Doc[ket] C. 244 and 1ˢᵗ 135 | | Date of Final Order or Judgment | Oct · 6 · 1889 | | RECORD No./Page | 2/109 · 8/153 · 8/166 · 7/376 · 18/166 · 18/277 — one pair per proceeding, in the same order | | JOURNAL No./Page | empty | The six Record pairs line up against the six proceedings, so the estate reads: Appointment → Record 2 p. 109 · Inventory → 8/153 · Sale Bill → 8/166 · Sale of Real Estate → 7/376 · Final Account → 18/166 · Distributive → 18/277.

Why this row is the most useful thing found on this thread

It names the two documents that can carry the heirs, and tells you exactly where both are. "Sale of Real Estate" → Record 7 p. 376. A probate court cannot order a decedent's land sold without the heirs before it, so the petition and order must list them by name and relationship. This is the proceeding that produced [K.102]'s 29 Dec 1888 administrator's sale of lots 40-41-42-44 Mexico to Lydia Cooper ([name.610]). "Distributive [Account]" → Record 18 p. 277. A distributive account records who was paid a share and how much — i.e. the distributees, by name. For a question about children, that is the single best document a probate file can produce, because a distribution enumerates the whole class of heirs rather than just the ones who happened to act. And the county's own series list gives the books: "Complete records 1887-1897 vol 7-9" covers Record 7 and 8, so the sale-of-real-estate and inventory entries are reachable now. Record 18 is NOT in the "Complete records" run (which reaches vol 14 by 1914), so the Distributive account is in a different series — most likely the Final records or a distribution book — and the series must be identified before it can be pulled. "Box 81 · Case 732" is the physical packet reference — what a county request or a FamilySearch Center order would cite for the original estate file, which normally holds the petition, the bond, the inventory, the sale papers and the vouchers.

The appointment record cross validates a 189

The first Record pair is 2 / 109 — and [A.189] is Administrators' bonds and letters VOLUME 2, PAGE 109. ⇒ the index's "Appointment" citation points at exactly the bond already transcribed, which independently confirms that this index row and that bond are the same estate, reached by two unrelated routes (the bond by its own decedent index, this by the county general index). Worth noting how that reading was made, because [A.189] recorded the opposite failure. There the page reference was read four times at increasing magnification and got steadily more confident and more wrong. Here the expectation — "it should say 109" — was exactly the kind of pressure that produces a circular reading, so the pair was cropped at 9× and judged on the letterform alone: the middle glyph is a single narrow oval, plainly unlike the double-looped 8 sitting directly beneath it in the same crop. ⇒ 109, read on its own evidence, and only then found to agree.

The administrator conflict

THIS ROW NAMES A DIFFERENT ADMINISTRATOR FROM THE BOND, AND BOTH READINGS ARE CROP-VERIFIED. [A.189], the bond and recorded Letters at v. 2 p. 109, reads "C. J. Spencer" — re-cropped at 4× for this entry: a tall looped S, a descending p, then encer. This index row reads "C. J. Yentzer" at 3.2×: a capital with a full descender below the line, then entzer with a distinct tz. They are different words, not one word read two ways — but the initials are identical (C. J.), which makes two unrelated men an uncomfortable coincidence. Three explanations, and the catalog picks none of them: (1) a successor administrator — the estate ran from Nov 1886 to Oct 1889, and the same reel's v. 2 bond index carries at least one "Administrator De bonis non", so successors do occur here; (2) a clerical slip in the index, which was compiled from the dockets rather than from the instruments; (3) a slip in the bond register, which is the primary instrument and the less likely of the two to be wrong. Against (1): the v. 2 bond index held exactly one Cooper, and a successor administrator would have given his own bond and generated a second row. But that index only runs to 1895 and a successor's bond might sit in a volume not yet examined. The decisive test is cheap and is tracked below: the Administrator's Docket C page 244, or the appointment entry itself, names the appointee.

The complete volume 2 co block

All six written pages, every surname, in the order written — the same chronological (not alphabetical) ordering as volume 1. Page 50 (image 255) — Coil et al. · Cover · Cornell · Cochenour · Cowgill et al. · Corfman et al. · Conant · Coon · Coon Page 51 (256) — Cook · Cowgill · Copeland · Cole Sr. · Cook · Coon · Coon · Conger · Conaghan Page 52 (257) — Cole · Cole et al. · Cox · Corfman · Cook · Colby · Cole · Cole · Coates Page 53 (258) — Corbin · COOPER G. G. · Coon · Corfman · Coates · Coons · Courtad · Coon · Corwin Page 54 (259) — Cochenour · Corfman · Cook · Coon · Corfman · Cole · Coon · Corfman · Coates Page 55 (260) — Cochenour · Conger et al. — then trails off blank Fifty entries; exactly ONE Cooper.

What this says about john cooper d 1899

JOHN COOPER (d. 1899) IS NOT IN THIS INDEX — and the boundary is established the same way as in [A.190]: a "BLANK PAGES" placard opens the block at image 255, the key table allots "Co" to pages 50-57, and page 55 trails off blank, so pages 56-57 are unused and no page is unread. That is a surprise worth stating plainly, because the reel's item is titled "Estate index 1845-1900" and [K.102] proves a "John by Admr" sale was recorded 4 April 1901, which implies a case opened around 1899-1900. Two readings, and the catalog does not choose: either volume 2's entries in practice stop short of 1900, or John's case was indexed in the separate "Estate index 1890-1906 vol 3", which overlaps volume 2 and is a different film. ⇒ volume 3 is the next place to look, and the null here is a null for THIS volume, not for the county.

Which column the numbers are in

Method note worth keeping. The six number pairs could have been JOURNAL or RECORD citations, and the two column groups sit side by side. Computing the answer from crop coordinates against a separately-cropped header strip gave an ambiguous result. What settled it was one crop at 2× that contained the printed column heads AND the data in the same image — at which point the alignment is simply visible: the numbers sit under RECORD (No. | Page) and the JOURNAL columns are empty. Generalisable: when a value's meaning depends on which column it is in, crop the header and the value together. A header read in one image and a value in another is an inference about geometry, and geometry inferences are as unreliable as any other.

How volume 2 was located

[A.190] left this open; it is now closed, by bisection on the printed page number. The reel carries two books with no END/BEGIN placard between them, and the printed form is identical in both, so nothing on a frame says which volume it belongs to except the page number sequence. Observed: image 41 = page 50 · image 47 = page 58 · image 141 = page 203 (volume 1, pages rising), then image 225 = page 12 · image 250 = page 41 · image 255 = page 50 · image 409 = page 250 (volume 2). ⇒ the numbering restarts between images 141 and 225, and volume 2 begins at image 214 or later (page 12 at image 225 leaves at most 11 frames of run-up). Its exact first frame is still not pinned — not needed, because the key table gives the page and two anchors give the frame. The arithmetic that flagged the two-book structure in the first place now checks out: 47 → 141 is 94 frames for 145 pages (pages exceed frames, as blank-skipping requires), whereas 141 → 409 was 268 frames for 47 pages, which is impossible in one book.