"This book contains abstracts of wills, inventories, estates, guardianships, and chancery court records for the four Northern Neck counties of Westmoreland, Richmond, Northumberland, and Lancaster in northeastern Virginia. The abstracts are organized alphabetically by the name of the deceased followed by the date the record was written or ordered, the date the document was probated or recorded, and the abstract of the record, which might include names and relationships of family members, names of heirs and beneficiaries, witnesses, bequests, inventories of estates, and court cases involving money, land, or slaves. A staggering 20,000 persons are named in these abstracts, which illuminate family relationships with a higher degree of accuracy than any comparable set of genealogical records, providing a rock-solid foundation for building your family history. Along with the index and bibliography, the book contains appendixes discussing such subjects as surname variants, nicknames and given names, county families, and slave names. Besides this rich trove of data, the abstracts are a window on the times, providing social and historical context for the first quarter of the nineteenth century, identifying people from both the 1700s and the 1800s."--Genealogical.