Other Places to Find Probate Records
All over the internet there are indexes, abstracts and transcriptions of various kinds of probate records. Even if you have found a will etc. at FamilySearch or Ancestry it is worthwhile to search in these because you might be able to find family members in records you would not see them in otherwise.
Printed indexes are easier to use than the ones in the front of the book and sometimes they are every name indexes. Sometimes indexes have been scanned in these other collections so they look the same as what you find at FamilySearch but they are easier to navigate.
Probate records are arranged by the person who died but abstracts and transcriptions make everyone in the document searchable. This means you might locate your Careys when they are witnesses or sons-in-laws or neighbors or bondsmen.
Here are some of the best places to hunt for these records:
Book Collections:
Search using state and wills
search using
New Jersey Wills
probate essex massachusetts
will greene pennsylvania
do a search like this
you might also terms like
Alabama will index
In Google book search you can add surnames as a search term but remember spelling in probate records was varied. You may be better off to check the index of the book for any likely-looking names.
Be aware that Google Books preview & full view might pull up books that only let you preview 250 pages of a 400 page book. You have to hope what you want is on the preview pages but if you move the button to full view you lose a lot of potential content.
FamilySearch
From the main page at FamilySearch under the search tab at the top (just to the left of the indexing tab) choose Books
The FamilySearch collection has items with varying degrees of public accessibility. When you pull up an item and click on details there will be a field for Access Rights - if it says public you may read the book. If somewhere in that field it says "terms" that means it probably can only be viewed at the local Family History Library. The books are pulled from a variety of archives and libraries.
the book viewing software is slow to load so be prepared to wait. There is also no find in page so that you need to go to the end of the book and use the index.
Ancestry trees has many digital images uploaded of probate records that are NOT transcribed or even attached to every member of the family.
You can see if you hit the lottery and immediately find a will for the person you are looking for by searching the
Public Member Photos & Scanned Documents database at Ancestry
http://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=1093
but the chances of success depend on how the users have tagged an image.
Rootsweb
Rootsweb includes thousands and thousands of genealogy pages. These include the GenWeb project pages, personal genealogy websites, WorldConnect tree pages and more. It is a great place to search for these records and the easiest way to do this is using Google
in the search box put your terms followed by site:http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/
example
"Bucks County" Pennsylvania wills Carey site:http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/