Tennessee Probate Records

Probate records are court records created after an individual’s death that relate to a court’s decisions regarding the distribution of the estate to the heirs or creditors and the care of any dependents. You may find the names of married daughters or other relatives and their residences; or information about the adoption or guardianship of minor children and dependents. Probate records do not always give an exact date of death, but the death usually occurred within four months of probate. These documents are important to family history researchers, because they usually exist for time periods before civil birth and death records were kept.

Probate records of Tennessee are kept by the county clerk. In Shelby, Knox, and Davidson counties probate courts were established. You can obtain copies of the original records by contacting the clerk’s office in each county courthouse. Some county archives have the materials also. The Family History Library has microfilm copies of probate records from most counties.

Probate records may include such documents as wills, letters of administration, guardianships, probate journals, probate packets, and adoptions.

The probate packets that contain all documents pertaining to a probate case have the most genealogical information, but they are not always at the Family History Library. Copies of some county probate records are at the Tennessee State Library and Archives. Two sources for early Tennessee probate records are:

Meier, Oveda. Tennessee Ancestors: The Brave and the Dead, Probate and Death Records of Early Middle Tennessee, 1780–1805. Salt Lake City, Utah: O. Meier, 1990. (FHL book 976.8 P2m; FHL film 1697372.) This source contains abstracts of probate, Bible, and court records, county histories, and military death records for Davidson and Sumner counties. It includes a surname index.

Sistler, Byron. Index to Tennessee Wills and Administrations, 1779–1861. Nashville, Tennessee: Byron Sistler and Associates, 1990. (FHL book 976.8 P22s; fiche 6101646 [set of 5].) Records are arranged alphabetically by the name of the deceased. They show the year and county of the probate and the location of the record. A key to symbols for the counties and locations appears at the front of the book.

See the United States Research Outline for more information on the genealogical value of probate records. Some Tennessee probate records have been published and indexed in genealogical periodicals that are in the Family History Library.

Additional probate record information and sources can be found in the Locality Search of the Family History Library Catalog under:

TENNESSEE - PROBATE RECORDS

TENNESSEE, [COUNTY] - PROBATE RECORDS