Minnesota Probate Records
This entry was originally written by Carol L. Maki and Michael John Neill for Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources.
The probate office in county courthouses will usually have all those records pertaining to estates and wills, guardianships, juvenile court records, and insanity records. Probate case files for Freeborn, Pope, Washington, and Winona counties are at the Minnesota Historical Society Research Center. This repository also holds probate summary volumes (not the files) for numerous other counties in the state. Probate records will frequently pre-date death records in Minnesota counties. They may also help locate the out-of-Minnesota death record of an ancestor.
