Most extant North Carolina wills proved before 1761 are found in the Secretary of State Records at the North Carolina Archives. A list of the wills in this collection can be seen here:
There is a rather hefty fee involved when ordering from Archives (currently
$20.00) for those of you who do not live in North Carolina.
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UPDATE 2007: In the past several years
all of Currituck's will books & Pleas of Quarter Sessions have been sent to the
Archives and copies of wills from the Currituck Courthouse can no longer be
obtained. You MUST send to the Archives for wills that predated
about 1908.
Copies of wills which were proved after about 1908 can be ordered from the
Currituck Courthouse but they are not in books but are loose records filed in
drawers.
Currituck County Clerk of Court
P.O. Box 71
Currituck, NC 27929
Telephone: (252) 232 - 3297
It will be most helpful if you will provide the folks at Archives or at the Currituck Courthouse with the first and last name of the testator (including spelling variations) and the will book number and page number, but if you only know the name and the year the will was written and/or proved, they can usually find it.
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Some Notes About Currituck County Will Book 1
This book contains wills that were proved from April Court 1761 through February Court 1792. There are two copies of this book at the Courthouse; one appears to contain copies of the original wills written on parchment, and the second is a later clerk's copy of the first book on ledger paper. The older book is generally more difficult to read, but is more accurate. Most of the wills on this internet site that were transcribed by Judy Merrell Brickhouse were taken from the older book. In some cases, when there were questions about the content of an older copy, a comparison was made against the more recent copy. If a will you are interested in has been transcribed from the older book and contains a lot of question marks or blanks, you may want to order copies from both the older and the newer will books in order to fill in some of the blanks.
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Another important point to remember is that the boundaries of Currituck Precinct/County have changed over time. For this reason, you will find that there are a number of early Currituck wills for people who lived in the areas that are now Tyrrell, Dare, and Hyde Counties.
