G ENEALOGISTS and historians of colonial America have long turned to probate records for information on the wealth and family connections of individuals. Wills and inventories represent as well a large, detailed, and well organized source for the systematic study of social history. In the past decade scholars have attempted to analyze their aggregate patterns; studies have been made, for example, of the distribution, of wealth among decedents,' and of changes in patterns of inheritance.2 In order to generalize about the living population, the age profile of the probated has been adjusted for the fact that the dead are older than the living.3 The reliability of conclusions reached through the analysis of probate records depends to some extent on the degree of coverage and the biases in this source. Historians have been aware that probate records are not complete and have suggested that the omissions probably are not random. Estimates of the extent of underregistration have rested, however, on the known