Wills of Columbia County, NY

by Cliff Lamere     28 Mar 2010

Wills are kept at the county level in New York State. 

The Columbia Co. Surrogates Court in Hudson has wills, letters of administration, and letters testamentary copied into ledgers. They also have some of the original old wills. 

Columbia Co. formed in 1786 from Albany County.  Wills prior to that, if they exist, should be stored by the Albany Co. Surrogates Court, but they may be in the possession of the Albany County Hall of Records.  

A county should only have copies of those wills which were probated.  Laws concerning which wills required probating changed from time to time.  Most wills were not probated, so they would not exist unless descendants preserved them.

Book Resources

A)  Barber, Gertrude -- Abstracts of Wills of Columbia County New York 1786-1828
This book is available at the Columbia County Historical Society in Kinderhook

B)  Barber, Gertrude A. -- Calendar of wills of Columbia County, New York. New York (1935)
Available on Ancestry.com (subscription)

C)  Arthur C.M. Kelly of Kinship Publishing Co. has recently published the following books:
   1)  Will Abstracts, Columbia County, NY; 1786-1828; Part 1; Books A - F
   2)  Will Abstracts, Columbia County, NY; 1828-1851; Part 2; Books F - K

D)  In 1800, business in the nearby city of Albany was still conducted in Dutch.  The English controlled the state from New York City.  If a will transferred land or a certain amount of money, a copy of that will was made and sent to New York City.  From 1892-1909, The New-York Historical Society transcribed and published in 17 volumes, about 7300 pages, all of the wills 1665-1801 in the possession of the city of New York. Columbia County and other counties which existed at the time were included.  The following is the name of the first volume.  Other volumes have similar titles.

"Abstracts of Wills on File in the Surrogate's Office, City of New York"
Volume 1, 1665-1707, New-York Historical Society Collections for the Year 1892
Pub: 1893

The volumes are available in hard copy at the NYS Library in Albany. Heritage Books published all volumes on a single CD. It is available for $89.95. The wills are also available on Ancestry (subscription).

Internet Resources

A)  A convenient, alphabetized list of Columbia Co. Testators (people who had wills) is provided by SAMPUBCO.

B)  Another source of will information is the US GenWeb Archives site.  It is available only in 25 separate alphabetized lists, which makes them quite inconvenient to use.  However, if you go to the home page, then to the search engine for New York State (no link from the wills webpage provided for either), you can enter a surnname there to see if a will exists.

C)  "Calendar of Wills on file and recorded in the offices of the Clerk of the Court of Appeals, of the County Clerk at Albany, and of the Secretary of State, 1626-1836"  Compiled and Edited by Berthold Fernow (1896)

This includes short abstracts of the wills, some of which are for Columbia Co.  They are not nearly complete as those done by the New-York Historical Society.  The link opens up on a black page before the title page.  Just scroll down.  An index begins on page 489 in the book.  Enter that number in the little search window just above the book page.  Caution:  1)  Once you find a name, enter it in the search window at the LEFT margin, then hit GO.  The image number is not usually the same as the book's page number or that listed in the index, but it is not off by much.  2)  The abstracts are NOT alphabetical, but all the As are together, as are also the Bs, Cs, etc.  The index works better than browsing, and will lead you to wills for other people which name the person for whom you are looking.

D)  Susan Mulvey has a few transcribed Columbia County wills on her USGenNet site.

Visitors since 28 Mar 2010