Amanuensis Monday - Accounting of the Estate of Thomas Cook 1820

On his TransylvanianDutch blog, John Newmark defines an amanuensis as “a person employed to write out what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another.” For more information about this daily blogging prompt, see John’s post Amanuensis – Why?.

I have amassed quite a collection of scans of handwritten documents related to my ancestors—primarily marriage records, deeds, and wills. As I have been transcribing these documents, it occurred to me that most of these documents were not actually written by my ancestors, but rather dictated to someone else, and then transcribed by a clerk into official records.



My two previous posts regarding the estate of Thomas Cook include his will and the inventory. Today I am posting an image and transcript of the accounting of the property sold, or available to be sold, to cover debts which was presented to the court in the May term 1820.

[Source: Wilkes County, North Carolina, Wills, 3: 223, Thomas Cook, deceased; FHL microfilm 393,950.]

© 2011 Denise Spurlock