Washington County Probate Court
/
Washington County Registry of Probate
Records
The Washington
County Registry of Probate maintains all the records of the Probate
Court for Washington County from 1785 until present.
Washington County
Probate records from 2007 onward are now available at
www.maineprobate.net/,
a website for all 16 Maine Registries of Probate. Back years are
being added as time permits.
The documents on
file include probated estates (wills, letters testimony,
inventories, etc), Adoptions, Guardianships of Minors and Adults,
Conservatorships of Minors and Adults, Trusts, and Name Changes.
All records are open to the public except the Adoption records after
September 1953.
This office houses
the original Census Books of 1850, 1860 and 1870. Genealogists
prefer to use them instead of national microfilmed copies which are
often handwritten copies of handwritten copies. In some instances
the microfilmed copies of copies contain errors such as misspelled or
omitted names.
Our staff also
assists the public in accessing Washington County’s collection of
newspapers, the largest of its
kind in the State, including some newspapers that are found nowhere
else. Currently more than half of these newspapers are on microfilm
located in our office together with a microfilm reader-printer.
Finally, our office
sells reproductions of the 1881 Washington County Atlas.
We do not maintain
records of marriage or death. These records are maintained by the
individual towns although many records have been placed on
file with the state archives in Augusta.
