Estate packets are filed in the offices of each county's Judge of Probate's office in South Carolina. They contain vital information about our ancestors and their communities. This volume contains abstracts of the first third of Marlboro County estate files as filmed by the South Carolina Department of Archives and History up through Compartment 17 Packet 3. Every crucial name within these files is included in the abstract including names of deceased individuals and indications of their death dates, their executors and administrators, securities on bonds, heirs and their spouses, enslaved people, debtors, creditors, witnesses, guardians and purchasers at sales. All the wills in these files are also abstracted. Not only are family relationships revealed or suggested, but bonds of interdependence, occupations and associations. If your ancestor was an enslaved person, you may find evidence of relationships, emancipations, age, craft specialties, sale or inheritance. In the late 19th century you may find evidence of association with former owners in terms of debts, labor performed, purchases, tenancy. Even if your ancestor's estate is not recorded here, can you find a debt that he owed in concert with another person? Can you find when your ancestor purchased items at an estate sale in company with other people in his family? These are the keys to unlocking interconnections and relationships. Note that the records are not filed strictly chronologically, so both early and later estates are involved in this and subsequent volumes. With detailed introduction describing the estate process, the import of the records, the process of abstraction, an alphabetical list of deceased individuals or wards (in the case of guardianships) in the volume, and a glossary of legal terms. The index is complete with surnames, given names, enslaved persons' names (enslavers in parentheses), and place names.