Tag Archives: wills

My response to MoJ consultation: Storage and retention of original wills

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Only four days remain before the deadline of the Ministry of Justice consultation paper regarding proposals to destroy all post-1858 original Wills and related documents, with the exception of those of famous people, and to retain only digital files of the rest. The full consultation paper may be viewed here.

You can respond directly at the following address or by email: civil_justice_poli@justice.gov.uk

Will Storage consultation
Ministry of Justice
Civil Justice and Law Division,
Postpoint 5.25
102 Petty France
London
SW1H 9AJ

The deadline for replies is this coming Friday, 23 February.

Below, is my own response in full, which was emailed this morning.

***

Response to the Ministry of Justice Open consultation paper: Storage and retention of original will documents, Published 15 December 2023

Question 3: Are there any reasons why the High Court should store original paper Will documents on a permanent basis, as opposed to just retaining a digitised copy of that material?

Yes.  As a professional genealogist/ researcher working with documents in archives as well as online digitised copies of certain documents, I object strongly to proposals set down in the above consultation paper to destroy the majority of Wills and related documents after a prescribed period, replacing them with digital images of the same.  My reasons are below.

Question 5: Do you agree that there is equivalence between paper and digital copies of wills so that the ECA 2000 can be used?

No.  In archival terms  paper wills and digital copies are not equivalent.  Only the original is ‘the original’.  A digital copy of that, no matter how perfect, is a stand-in: a ‘surrogate’.  Even the citation appropriate for these types of documents is different: if a researcher is in the presence of the original document, the citation will be to that document and its location; if using a ‘digital copy’ of that, the citation requires extra information: what, precisely was viewed, via what website or other source, and when was it accessed?  There is a reason for this: only the original can be guaranteed to include every mark and every page.

Digital preservation is not infallible.  Despite the ‘huge advances that technology has made over recent years’ (Point 27) it does not follow that ‘digital copies of original documents can be extremely detailed and all relevant marks on the original will be retained in the digital version.’  JPEGs are ‘lossy’ files.  Lossy compression compresses an image, making it smaller (and more economical) to store, but the trade-off is a permanent loss of detail.  As a researcher who regularly downloads images from archives and commercial genealogy websites I know that those images are much-reduced JPEGs.  Consequently, there are times when only the original will do, for example when comparing signatures with other documents to confirm this is the same person; or if a stain on the original document renders text illegible in digital format: in a good light, the eyes may be able to decipher the original. 

Digital files can also corrupt, resulting in permanent loss of all contents.  In any case, the technology available to us now may be surpassed in the not too distant future. 

There is also the issue of human error.  During the photographing process, it is possible to turn over two pages at once, to leave off useful information on the rear of a document, or even to omit an entire document.  All researchers using online digital images will have experience of this.  On occasion, too, documents may be incorrectly indexed, making the correct digital files very difficult to find.  In 2023 entries on the GRO Births and Deaths registers were made available for direct download – a development greeted with delight by the genealogy world; and yet some of the digital photographs of the entries are not usable, owing to having been photographed at an angle, thereby cutting off essential information.  The point with all these difficulties is that the original documents remain intact: they have not been destroyed.  The digitisation is a great thing, but we need the originals too.

Question 4: Do you agree that after a certain time original paper documents (from 1858 onwards) may be destroyed (other than for famous individuals)?

No.  History is not just about ‘famous people’.  Concepts have changed.  History is also about the many millions of others who were impacted by decisions of the powerful.  Their Wills are important too.

Question 6: Are there any other matters directly related to the retention of digital or paper wills that are not covered by the proposed exercise of the powers in the ECA 2000 that you consider are necessary?

It is clear from the wording of the consultation paper that a rather narrow understanding of the enduring value of Wills and Probate documents is at play.  Point 27 asserts that ‘All parties and courts will […] be equally able to rely on digital copies of wills to challenge the validity of that will or another as they would be if relying on the paper will.’  Undoubtedly that is true; and in this regard legal issues such as time limits for contesting a Will are relevant, and the comparison with time limits for retention of other Court documents (Point 45) is valid.

However, once Probate is granted, the Will and associated documents become public documents.  As such, the original purpose of the Will and Probate documents is not its enduring value.  It is not appropriate to restrict considerations to the immediate legal purposes and to the emotional attachment of the testator’s nearest and dearest.  The wider value of a Will may become apparent many years into the future.  Genealogists use them to learn about the immediate and wider family of the individual, their lifestyle and social standing.  Historians and social scientists may take a much broader approach, for example examining Wills made by individuals in a particular location, or a particular ‘type’ of person, using their findings to draw conclusions about, and better understand that location, or our society more generally in the past.

Question 9: Do you agree with the principle that wills of famous people should be preserved in the original paper form for historic interest?

I agree of course that wills of famous people should be preserved, but not that this should be the exception to the rule of mass destruction.

The suggestion (Point 51) that this already happens for pre-1858 Wills is misleading and untrue.  Before 1858, Probate was a matter for the ecclesiastical courts, and these valuable historic documents are stored in diocesan archives, with some original and copy Wills of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury held at The National Archives.  While it is true that Prerogative Court of Canterbury: Wills of Selected Famous Persons have been separated out and stored in record series PROB 1, the implication that only these Wills have been kept is false.  Not a single Will was destroyed; Wills of individuals not deemed ‘Famous Persons’ are archived within a different part of the collection.

Question 10: Do you have any initial suggestions on the criteria which should be adopted for identifying famous/historic figures whose original paper will document should be preserved permanently?

The mere posing of this question illustrates the problem: there is a value judgement linked to this.  Since your values may be different to mine, who will decide?  Might society’s assessment change over time?  A suffragist in the nineteenth century might be considered a tiresome person, yet that same person today may be considered a trailblazer, playing an important part in the road to universal suffrage.  What a travesty if it turned out this person’s Will was destroyed because they were not sufficiently ‘famous’, or their fame did not accord with contemporary values.

Janice Heppenstall

Save Our Wills!

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First of all, a very Happy New Year to you all.

You may already know about the UK Ministry of Justice’s proposals to destroy original copies of post-1857 Wills after 25 years. The proposal is to retain only a digital copy of each Will. Information about the proposals is contained in the Ministry of Justice’s Consultation Paper, which you will find [here].

As genealogists we are all in favour of digitisation of documents, and easy availability online. The government’s online Wills and Probate service is an example of this, allowing us to search, and for just £1.50, to receive a digital copy of the relevant Will by email.

However good the digital image, though, there is a difference between it and the original document. In archivist terms, it is only the original which is the ‘original document’. The digital images we mostly use via subscription websites or indeed the GRO’s online Wills and Probate service, are termed ‘surrogates’. There is always the possibility that part of a document is not included, that one page is blurred, that part of one page is missing, or that a few handwritten words on the reverse that might just be the clue to a mystery are not included. As all of us who work regularly with genealogy websites know, it could be months or years before such a problem is noticed. If the original exists somewhere this can be resolved. However, if the original has already been destroyed, valuable information is lost for ever.

Genealogist and former archivist of many years at The National Archives, Dave Annal, has put together an excellent video in which he summarises in just over five minutes the main problems with these proposals.

My friend and colleague Richard Holt has taken a particular interest in this matter from before the launch of the present proposals and consultation by the Ministry of Justice. In his blogpost Justice for Wills and Probate Documents he writes about times in his research when only an original will do. Initially his concern was with the operation of the Freedom of Information request process, but since the launch of the proposals to digitise and destroy original post-1857 Wills, his concerns have increased, and these are covered in the second half of that blogpost. 

I will not spend time adding my own thoughts to those of Richard and Dave, since I do agree with all they say. Indeed, online and via any groups that you are part of, you will find an increasing number of articles and robust responses from other genealogists, historians, archivists and societies/ associations linked to these fields.

So what can we do about it?

Richard has launched a petition to the UK Government and Parliament: Do not allow original wills to be destroyed after 25 years – Petitions (parliament.uk). If you are a UK citizen or resident you will be able to sign it. At the time of writing this, there are 7410 signatures.

You can also respond directly to the Ministry of Justice’s consultation. This option is open to anyone, anywhere in the world – and of course many people have UK ancestry so this affects all of us. Replies must be received by 23 February, using the email civil_justice_poli@justice.gov.uk or the following address:

Will Storage consultation
Ministry of Justice
Civil Justice and Law Division,
Postpoint 5.25
102 Petty France
London
SW1H 9AJ

Finally, please share this information with others who you think will be concerned by these proposals.

#SaveOurWills

Using wills to identify community networks

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Diagram showing the networks provided by the Wills of three men in a small village in Wharfedale between 1693/94 and 1712/13, plus the Probate Register entry of another man. The network seen through these documents includes a total of 36 people.

The ‘All About That Place’ event, as well as a short course I was doing at the same time: Progressing Your Local History Research (346) through Pharos Tutors, inspired me to start a couple of ‘One Place Studies’, and to register them with the Society for One Place Studies.

One of my studies, Starbotton in Wharfedale, focuses on the Early Modern period – roughly 1500-1750, although depending on the records available, it may end up homing in on just part of that period. Starbotton is part of the parish of Kettlewell and importantly, no parish registers for the period before 1698/ 1700 have survived. Although there are some Bishop’s Transcripts for the seventeenth century, survival of these records too is limited and patchy. This means I have no continuous register of any kind to use as a foundation for rebuilding the community of people in Starbotton before the last fifty years of my period of interest. The primary challenge will be to locate as many alternative sources as possible and then find ways to make them work together.

Prior to the Local History course my research in Starbotton had focused on my Simondson family. I already had Wills for three of the Simondson men who died between 1693/4 and 1712/13, plus the Probate register entry only for another, John, who died in 1705 and named Anthony as his executor. Christopher’s was a holographic Will, meaning a group of trusted family and friends gathered at his deathbed, helped him to organise his thoughts, and wrote up the document after his death, all of them signing to verify that the contents were the wishes of the deceased. The Wills of Lister and Christopher are accompanied by Inventories, which are also signed by everyone involved in that process.

Something I had previously noticed – both here and in another small village where I’ve accessed quite a few Wills – was the sense of community evoked through all the people involved in the Probate process – witnesses, executors, the men doing the inventory, bondsmen and so on – and that’s in addition to the named beneficiaries. They all pulled together to help each other at this time of need, and to ensure the wives and children were properly cared for.

With this in mind I decided to ‘map’ the network created by the three Simondson Wills, plus John’s Probate Register entry. Every fact, and every single person shown on the network chart at the top of this post came from a close reading of these Probate documents. I do have some additional information about some of the people, gained from other records. For example, it is Thomas Simondson who is my direct ancestor, and I have more information about him and his family, but his Will does not seem to have survived. I was surprised to find that, excluding beneficiaries, there were twenty people involved in this network-mapping process: nineteen men and one woman. Adding in the named beneficiaries brings the total to thirty-seven: eleven women/ girls and six men/ boys are named beneficiaries. This younger generation will make my job a bit easier since most of them undergo some religious rite or other that brings them into the period of the surviving parish registers.

Homing in on householders though – which in itself would be a great step forward – these Wills have given me a LOT of information about the village community. I do recognise most of the surnames and in some cases the first names too. Comparison with a transcript of the 1672 Lady Day Hearth Tax return, and also with a list of churchwardens from all available Bishop’s Transcripts indicates that most are from the parish. However, the parish includes Kettlewell as well as Starbotton, so there is still work to do in trying to separate out the two.

A person’s ‘community’ is not necessarily restricted to his or her village. In addition to the village community there will be wider networks too, based on friendships, marriages, worship (e.g. Nonconformists in rural locations would have a geographically wider network), business, market days, and so on. Based just on my Simondson family, I know that they had family connections throughout Wharfedale and into what is now Lancashire too. This also seems to me to be part of the history of a Place: where were the wider networks and connections? What were the reasons for this? And was it different for people from different social levels?

I’ve now located about ten more Wills for the same period for other testators living in Starbotton and will gradually collect and transcribe these, looking for overlaps, and comparing the findings to other records known to be for residents of Starbotton.

Where there’s a Will there’s a way…

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You might have noticed I’ve given a lot of thought on this blog to records related to our ancestors’ deaths. It started a couple of years ago when an increase in the cost of civil BMDs prompted me to write about what other kinds of records might be available that would give much of the same information – and sometimes more – thereby saving the cost of the death certificate.  Next came What Can Death Records Tell Us About Life? Death records have also featured here and there as evidence used in conjunction with other findings in my research to prove one hypothesis or another. The truth is I love a good death record. They can tell us SO much about a person, their life and family; and none more so than a Will.

The last two posts have focused on how to find Wills and Administration documents, both since 1858 and the far more cumbersome arrangements before the changes of that year. Today we’ll look at lots of ways we can use the Wills, particularly those from earlier centuries when there might be gaps in other record sets. They really are not just about how much money there was and who inherited it!

A Will can…

Substitute for a baptism
There was an example of this in a recent post when, finally, I found a father’s will in which he (Nathaniel) named and bequeathed land to my 6xG grandmother Jane, who I had long suspected was his daughter. Until this point I had built a good case but there was no definite evidence that they were father and daughter. Although, in the absence of a baptism record, I still have no definite birth year for Jane, the order in which Nathaniel refers to his two daughters indicates she is younger than her sister (baptised 1685), thereby supporting Jane’s own death record which suggests a birth year of 1687.

In another example, I suspected my 8xG grandfather, Thomas, was one of six siblings born to Christopher Simonson. I had baptisms for most of these siblings but not for Thomas, likely born during the Interregnum. In this example it was one of the brothers, Lister, baptised as son of Christopher in 1642, whose Will came to the rescue. In it, Lister specifically refers to ‘my brother, Thomas’. Thomas is a witness, scribe and co-executor to the Will, and by comparing handwriting to other known documents I can see this is definitely my Thomas.

Substitute for a marriage
Lister’s will worked overtime for me. In referencing his brother-in-law, Thomas Snell, he also made his will stand in for his own missing marriage record. Thomas Snell was his wife’s brother, therefore her maiden name was also Snell.

Substitute for a burial
It goes without saying that if Probate has been granted the testator has died! So even if we can’t find a burial record, we have a pretty good idea of the month and place of death. Sometimes the actual date of death is noted on the back of the bundle of papers.

Help you fill out the family of your ancestor
It may name sons, daughters, siblings, parents, cousins… There may also be people who seem to be family members but can’t yet be placed. All need to be noted and when possible can be inserted into your tree.

However, the absence of a child’s name does not imply a parting of the ways. Nor will the list of children necessarily include them all. A couple of years ago I wrote about my discovery that my 4xG grandfather John Wade’s Will made no reference at all to his daughters, leaving the family business and money only to his sons. The four sisters remained unmarried and lived together throughout their lives. It wasn’t until I obtained each of their Wills that I realised they had been well-cared for prior to their father’s death, in the form of railway stocks and shares. Father John’s arrangement ensured the daughters would retain their own money (and a level of independence) even if they married, while the family business would remain in the hands of his own sons.

Generally, though, wives and daughters will be named – offering us a rare sighting of the female family members in a time when documents usually omitted them completely.

Confirm family roots within a locality
Again, Lister gives value. In his Will he expresses his wish to be buried in the local churchyard, ‘as near to my Ancestors as possible’. This implies several previous generations in this parish. When I first read this I knew only of the father, and baptisms of the other siblings showed he had moved around the region. I now have two more generations before that, and ongoing wider research suggests a long association of this family with the area, although I’m yet to join the dots.

Suggest literacy levels
Although the shaky initials or ‘mark’ of the testator doesn’t necessarily mean they are unable to write (they may simply have been too weak to write at that precise time), certainly we can see which of the witnesses could write. Even official copies of Wills record who signed and who made marks. However originals provide additional clues: By comparing handwriting within the document and with others, you may even be able to work out if one of your ancestors wrote the document – even if maybe they could read and write in Latin.

Provide an insight into family relations
Generally, there is a sense of community at the time of writing and witnessing the Last Will and Testament of a sick relation. Death was part of life, and helping a family member or friend to put his affairs in order and ensure each other’s families were cared for was something done willingly. There is trust evident between the testator and those he chooses as his executors, or to assist a surviving spouse in the task. Occasionally, though, we might pick up on family tensions. In 1684 as my 8xG grandfather John Wilson divided up his lands and property between his five surviving sons, he included this final sentence: ‘And if any of my sayd sons their Executors or adm[inistrators] shall sue Molest or Trouble my sayd Executor for any greater Summe or Legacie then is given them by this my last Will and Testament that then the Legacie to them hereby given to bee voyd and noe more paid to them but Twelve pence.’  It seems John didn’t entirely trust his sons to behave well towards each other.

Hint at the testator’s religious views
Wills can, but do not necessarily reflect the testator’s religious views. They might instead reveal the scribe’s views. Alternatively, I have compared wills written within five years of each other but 40 miles apart, in which the similarity of overblown religious phrases in the opening lines suggests the two scribes were writing to an accepted formula.

Reveal how our ancestors lived
From 1530 to 1782 one of the probate/ administration requirements was that the executor should appoint three or four local men to value the deceased’s personal estate, and provide the probate court with a full ‘Inventory’: a detailed list of every single item of the deceased’s possessions, together with an assessed value for each. The Inventory relates only to the personal estate, i.e. it doesn’t include land and property; but since the list is generally organised room by room, including items found in outbuildings and barns, etc, it does indicate where the household included such buildings, how many living rooms and bedchambers and so on.

In the Will itself your ancestor may list houses, messuages, lands, etc. Comparison with contemporary maps may reveal exact locations of named holdings. He may also identify himself by occupation or standing. Not only does all this suggest a certain standard of living, but it may be compared with other record sets, such as occupations on baptisms or number of hearths listed on the Hearth Tax returns.

Show community networks
Occasionally we will find ourselves reading so many Wills from a small village that we recognise names of all those who regularly help out as scribes, witnesses, executors, takers of the inventories, and so on. We almost start to feel like we know all these 17th century inhabitants who were trusted community members and friends of our ancestors.

And finally… the bit we always expected the Will to be about:
Indicate how the land, property, goods and chattels were to be apportioned
Here we see how land was passed on according to the wishes of the testator and inheritance norms. We start to understand how, where the oldest son inherits the lion’s share, younger sons move progressively down the social hierarchy. There is also the possibility of bequests of small items treasured by the testator to a special person. (How wonderful would it be to recognise an item that your family still has!)

Alas…
Sadly, sometimes the bequests in the Will and the named beneficiaries prove you haven’t got the right person. I bought the Will of what I assumed was my 7xG grandfather Robert Lucas. He had a son named James in exactly the right place and at the right time to be my known 6xG grandfather, but when I read the Will there was no mention of James, just two daughters. It sent me back to the parish registers, and I found the little James I had assumed to be my ancestor had died not long after birth.

*****

Although most of the Wills are written in English, the further back you go, the more likely it is that you’ll need to be able to read old handwriting, but I think you’ll agree that with such riches available from scouring them, it’s worth the effort.

These are all examples of things I have learned from looking at Wills. Can you add anything more? Has something astonishing in an old Will ever helped you to break down a brick wall or make a great discovery?

Finding a pre-1858 Will

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In my last post I mentioned that the arrangements for Wills and probate in England and Wales changed in 1858.  After the Court of Probate Act of 1857, Wills are generally much easier to find.  Before 1858, however, the arrangement was far more complicated.

Ecclesiastical Courts
Prior to the changes brought about by the 1857 Act, the granting of probate and letters of administration (if someone died without making a Will) was a function of the ecclesiastical courts.  However, there were more than 300 possible courts.  Before we can work out which one dealt with our ancestor’s estate we first need to understand the court hierarchy within the Church of England. 

Between the Reformation and the mid-19th century there were twenty-seven dioceses in England and Wales. 

Map showing Church of England dioceses in England and Wales between the Reformation and the mid-19th century
Map showing C of E dioceses and provinces circa 1550 to mid-19th century

Then, as now, these were organised into two provinces, or archdioceses: York and Canterbury. The dioceses of York, Carlisle, Chester, Durham and Sodor & Man came within the province of York, the remainder fell within Canterbury.

Each of these dioceses were subdivided into archdeaconries, and it was generally here where matters of probate were decided.

However, there were many exceptions.  Some territories were instead under the jurisdiction of a manorial, ecclesiastical, royal or prebendary ‘peculiar’.  Elsewhere, jurisdiction might leap-frog the archdeaconry, resting instead with the bishop’s own ‘Consistory Court’. These probate rights were jealously guarded: they brought in an income.

[This map came from an article by Paul Wainwright about using York Diocese Cause Papers for family history research.]

The court to be used varied from parish to parish
Within each diocese there were of course many parishes, and even adjacent parishes could come under the jurisdiction of different Probate courts. The easiest way to find out the arrangements for your parish of interest is to use the online tool at FamilySearch.

  • Go to FamilySearch Maps and enter a location in the search box.
  • I’m going to use Kinver. Only one location, in Staffordshire, matches that name. That’s the one I need, so I’ll click on that.
  • A fairly basic map showing the boundaries of the parish appears. For Kinver, if I click to remove the pop-up box I can see that this parish included other places called Stourton and Compton.
  • However, we do need that pop-up box so I click the place name again over in the left sidebar and the box will reappear. What we’re interested in is Jurisdictions. Click on that, and fourth down in the list you’ll see Probate Court. For Kinver, we see that this parish comes under the diocese of Lichfield, and the Probate Court was the Court of the Bishop of Lichfield (Episcopal Consistory). In other words, this parish does not deal with the usual archdeaconry for probate matters.
  • For comparison, if I click on the adjacent parish of Wolverley, I’m now not only in a new county (Worcestershire) but also a new diocese: Worcester; and the Probate Court is the Court of the Dean and Chapter of Worcester. Back in Staffordshire, and back in the diocese of Lichfield, before 1846 my ancestors in Bilston would have used the Court of the Peculiar of Wolverhampton, and after that date would have used the Court of the Bishop of Lichfield (Episcopal Consistory).

Note that this information on FamilySearch Maps is good as at 1851. There may have been some changes, but generally this is a good place to start.

So you now have a picture of how complex the situation was, but at least we have a way of finding out which court dealt with the parish where our ancestor lived.

Probate took place where the testator held ‘property or noteworthy goods’
For most of our ancestors, once you’ve found the parish you know where to look for the probate or administration documents. However, technically, probate took place not where the testator died but where he or she held ‘property or noteworthy goods’.  What if your ancestor held land in several parishes or even several archdeaconries? The rule is quite simple: you go up a level in the church hierarchy until you reach the level that encompasses all the relevant lands. Hence, if a person held property in two archdeaconries within one diocese, probate was proved at the Bishop’s Consistory Court.  If property was held in more than one diocese, the Prerogative Court of Canterbury (PCC) or Prerogative Court of York (PCY) was used; and if in both provinces, probate at both was usual. 

The rule may be simple but the difficult part might be knowing all the places your wealthier ancestor held land.

Regardless of the above, for some circumstances the Prerogative Court of Canterbury was preferred or required

  • Serving soliders and sailors, and people who died abroad but held property in England and Wales.
  • From 1818-1858, if the deceased held stocks and shares, the Bank of England would only accept wills proved at the PCC.
  • The PCC was preferred by Nonconformists who wished to lessen the connection to the local Anglican church structures.
  • It was also preferred for reasons of prestige.

Finding the Wills
Building on that background information we’re now in a better position to look for our pre-1857 ancestors’ wills. As with the post-1857 National Probate Calendar, wills are indexed by year of probate which, if disputed, could be several years after death, so be prepared to search further than the actual year in which you know your ancestor died.  There is, unfortunately, no centralised index, so we must make use of finding guides (see below), but here are some pointers:

  • Wills proved at the archdeaconry or an ecclesiastical peculiar will usually be lodged with the relevant county archives.
  • Those proved at the bishop’s Consistory Court may be lodged with a separate diocesan archive.
  • Records of manor-peculiars can be difficult to locate. Being private papers, they could have been lodged out of county if the former lord of the manor had a principal home elsewhere. They might also have been lost, or simply never been made available to the public.
  • The National Archives hold registered copy wills for all probates made at the PCC between 1384 and 1858. These are not the original wills – you won’t see your ancestor’s signature – but they are copies of the original probates written into volumes by clerks at the church courts. You can search them [here]. At the time of writing (because of limited access to the National Archives at Kew) some of these are available to download free of charge. Some of them (but not all) are also available on Ancestry.co.uk in the record set England & Wales, Prerogative Court of Canterbury Wills, 1384-1858.
  • The Borthwick Institute in York holds half a million wills, dating from 1267 to 1858. Most of these are from Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire, but there are some from Cheshire, Lancashire, Westmorland, Cumberland, Northumberland and Durham. The index for all these documents from 1688 is available on Find My Past, with an easy link through to Borthwick for ordering digital copies of the originals. (Any probate documents will show up under Birth, Marriage & Death records.) Pre-1688 Wills are indexed separately, both at the Borthwick archives and also in a series of Yorkshire Archaeological Society publications available online through Internet Archive, starting with YAS Record Series Vol. 6: Index of wills in the York Registry, 1389 to 1514.
  • Other wills may be available online, but it all depends on licensing arrangements made between the archives and one of the subscription websites. For example, Ancestry has a record set called Yorkshire, England, Probate Records, 1521-1858 which includes probate documents for a manor-peculiar of interest to my research.

Finding Aids
These include:

FamilySearch maps

Smith, Cecil R. Humphery: The Phillimore Atlas and Index of Parish Registers – This is available on Ancestry.co.uk as the record set Great Britain, Atlas and Index of Parish Registers

J. Gibson & S. Raymond: Probate Jurisdictions: Where to look for wills 6th edition, The Family History Partnership, 2016 – This is an inexpensive booklet but is sometimes out of print. You can usually get second hand copies.  County record offices and local history libraries are also likely to have it.

Don’t forget that you can always ask the staff at the archives for advice if you get stuck.  I have only ever found them to be extremely helpful.

*****

This has necessarily been a whirlind tour.  I did a four-week course to learn how to find and use Wills, and if you wanted to do that too you can find the course [here].  But there is at least enough information here to get you started and I hope it helps.

Stop Press! Wills reduced!

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I’ve talked before about the government’s online Find a Will service.

Well… Big News!  The cost of using this service has been massively reduced.  Instead of £10 per Will, the cost is now £1.50.

I don’t know about you, but that makes a huge difference to me. I’m normally very careful about buying Wills and BMD certificates, only buying when I know it will give me information that will help me to progress in some way.  But at £1.50 per Will, I can justify buying ones that have merely piqued my curiosity.  I don’t know if this reduced price will be permanent, but if you can, it makes sense to go through your ancestors and see if there’s a Will or two you need.  I’ve ordered eight.

Why might you need a Will?
It’s not about being nosy and seeing how much money and property they left – although of course that information will tell you a lot about the kind of lifestyle your ancestor might have enjoyed.  But in fact a Will can tell us a great deal about family networks.  There might be a child you hadn’t known about, or perhaps a complicated family network following divorce or separation.  There could be a share of the inheritance to a child who seemed to you to have fallen off the radar.  Prior to the 1882 Married Women’s Property Act, fathers might have made arrangements for their daughters, to avoid all the inheritance falling into the hands of an unknown future husband.  In other words, a Will might give us a lot of useful information.

Some tips on using the service
The online Find a Will service deals only with probate from 1858 to the present day.  You have to search in one of three categories:

  • Wills and Probate 1996 to present
  • Wills and Probate 1858-1996
  • Soldier’s Wills – these will usually only be on here if the person was killed in action.  However, some of them have been lost.

Make sure you have the correct section highlighted before you enter your search terms.

Screen grab from UK government's Find a Will website search page

Although the search field asks for year of death, the information is in fact arranged by year of Probate, i.e. the year the Probate documents were finalised.  This could be the year after death, or in some cases several years after death.  So remember to search the following year or two if you can’t find your ancestor in the year they actually died.

If you find your ancestor you’ll see a short statement of who he or she is, where they lived, when they died, when and where Probate was granted and the names of Executors. This will help you to identify the correct deceased person, and you will also need some of this information to be able to order the documents.

Bear in mind that the Executors are not necessarily the beneficiaries, so the people listed on this note are not the full story.  For that, you do need to buy the Will and Probate documents.  For example, I’ve just ordered the Will below.  I expect William Cass, son, and William Wade, son-in-law, to inherit, but not Edwin Wade, who is the very able older brother of William Wade but not directly related to the deceased.Entry on UK Probate Calendar, 1860

After you’ve entered the search terms, sometimes Irish and Scottish records come up before the English ones start.  Sometimes, too, you might find your ancestor listed on a page headed ‘Administrations’ rather than ‘Probate’.  This means your ancestor didn’t leave a Will: they died ‘intestate’.  If your ancestor died intestate but still had property of value to pass on, the courts would appoint an administrator to deal with the estate.  In other words, it would be dealt with via Administration rather than Probate.  There will still be documents relating to the sharing out of the inheritance, but there won’t be a personal statement from the deceased relating to how they want their property to be shared.

Finally – you’ve found your ancestor, you’ve ordered your documents and you’ve paid your £1.50 per Will.  What a bargain!  So what next?  You’ll receive a link by email within a week or two, which will take you to images of the original documents.  You will have 31 days to download your copy of each will.

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What can death records tell us about life?

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In a previous post about Death Certificates I talked about a whole range of alternative records that could provide sufficient information about a person’s death to make purchasing the official certificate unnecessary. Today I want to return to this topic but with a different focus: to consider how these same records, purportedly confirming a person’s death, might tell us a great deal more about their life.

We know that after 1837 Death Certificates record specific information: the deceased’s name, age, place and cause of death, occupation (husband’s occupation if a married woman or widow) plus description/relationship and residence of informant.

Yet these facts of the deceased’s death start to give us clues about how they lived.  Did they live to a ripe old age or die young?  Does the cause of death suggest anything other than natural causes, e.g. an occupation-related disease, an accident, a suicide?  Was the informant a close relative?  If not the spouse or adult son/daughter, was it a sibling, indicating that the family remained close both geographically and in kinship?  If we then also add in some of the alternative sources of information about deaths (I listed them in that previous post), we might find we can learn a surprising amount of additional information.  Here are four quite different examples from my own research:

Coroner’s Reports
On 17th March 1898 my 2xG grandfather, Edward, took his own life.  The death of a person in unexpected, unexplained or violent circumstances triggers a Coroner’s hearing.  Where records of these survive they will be at the local Archives/ Record Office.  Sometimes they are quite brief, but Edward’s isn’t.

The Coroner interviewed four people: the bridge turner who was the last person to see Edward alive: the coal boat master who found his body in the water; and the woman who strip-washed and laid him out.  The principle interviewee was Edward’s daughter, my great grandmother, Jane.  Between the four of them they provide information about what happened that day.

But Jane also talks about how Edward was in life.  She paints a picture of him in the days and weeks leading up to his death.  He smoked his tobacco but had a serious, ongoing bronchitis condition (they probably hadn’t worked out the connection by then); he received 3 shillings a week from the Poor Law Guardians; he had a life insurance policy with the Prudential (I wonder if they paid out for suicides).  She visited him daily, and had seen a change in his behaviour – he had become very ‘irritable and childish’ during the past 3-4 weeks.

I learned that Edward lived in a ‘yard’, above a stable.  He had given notice but had not yet left.  A few days before Edward’s suicide, the occupier of the stable below had ‘insulted him’, causing him to fear that the stable occupier would return on St Patrick’s Day to break all his windows.  Whatever happened, and whatever was at the root of the animosity, it was clearly weighing heavily on Edward’s mind.

The reference to St Patrick’s Day is intriguing.  What was the significance?  Edward’s first wife was Irish, but she was long dead; and although I’ve never found Edward’s baptism, family legend has it that ‘he went back to the place where he was born to drown himself’.  Have I been looking in the wrong place: could Edward have been Irish?  Edward is the enigma that keeps on giving.

Obituaries
If your ancestor was particularly grand or achieved something noteworthy in their life, you may find an obituary in the local/ national newspaper or other publication.

My 4xG uncle Edwin Wade, was Lord Mayor of York in 1864-65.  A successful surgeon-dentist, he was active for many years in local politics, a ‘mover and shaker’ in many public bodies, and an early investor in the railway company.  I hadn’t appreciated just how much of a pillar of the community he had been until I read his obituary in the York Herald, 13th December, 1889.  (FindMyPast newspaper search.)  There, I learned that Edwin was also senior Justice of the Peace and associated with public bodies such as the Lunatic Asylum, School for the Blind, York Tourists’ Society, York Savings Bank and the Merchant Taylor’s Company.

Edwin’s funeral was a huge event.  As the cortège passed through the streets of York, the whole city came to a standstill.  Blinds were drawn on the Mansion House and other public as well as residential buildings; shutters were closed on local businesses.  A comprehensive list is given of the York great and good who attended, and also all family members.  This helped me to track down a number of marriages and other connections.

Wills
For any ancestors who died since 1858, you can search the government’s wills and probate website to see if they left a will.  Be sure to enter your search (surname and exact year of probate – which may be after the year of death) in the correct section: 1858-1996; 1996 to present; or soldier’s wills.  Once you’ve identified the correct person on the ‘Probate Calendar’ you can order a digital copy of the actual will (cost £10) which will be emailed to you.

Wills can tell us a huge amount about our ancestors and their families, and I’ve ordered quite a few over the years.  However, in the example that follows, just the information on the Probate Calendar was enough to solve my current problem:

I had traced one of my lines back to a William Wade in York, and I knew his wife (my 3xG grandmother) was Jane, but wasn’t yet sure either of Jane’s maiden name or of William’s parents.  One of the possible marriages was to a Jane Cass in Huntington, daughter of Thomas, an innkeeper.  Possible parents for William were John Wade and Sarah; and if this was correct, I had found baptisms for all of William’s siblings.  I entered all this on my tree, noting that it was not yet proven.  Some time later I found a likely death for Thomas Cass, and then an entry on the Probate Calendar:

Entry on UK Probate Calendar, 1860

I could have ordered the actual will and I’m sure I will, eventually.  However, although this short entry told me only one thing I didn’t know about Thomas (he left ‘Effects under £300’), it proved without doubt that all parts of my hypothesis about this line were correct.  It linked my known 3xG grandfather William Wade to Thomas Cass, and even included William’s older brother, Edwin.  Strange I thought at the time, to name the  brother of your son-in-law as the chief executor…  Of course, that was before I knew that Edwin Wade was your all-singing all-dancing politician, board member, soon to be Lord Mayor of York, and in general the man to trust if you wanted something done!

Monuments, epitaphs, etc, in churches
For reasons that deserve a separate post it’s not always clear if our ancestors were Nonconformists.  For years I couldn’t find a baptism record for my 3xG grandfather, John Ingham.  Eventually a possible emerged.  Everything made sense: the location (Morley), the year, even the names of the parents and siblings which I could see repeated in his own children.  The only problem was that adult John seemed to be Church of England.  He married Betty in her C of E parish church (Calverley), and all their children were baptised accordingly.  But this baptism was in an Independent chapel.  I dithered for a long time over whether to accept this record as John’s.  In the meantime, continuing to research other lines, I gradually realised that a lot of my other ancestors came from Calverley and adjacent villages – and they were all Nonconformists.  There seems to have been large communities of different Nonconformist congregations in a triangle taking in Calverley, Pudsey (Betty’s actual birthplace) and another village called Idle. Might there also have been some sort of connection between these congregations and that of Morley, where the possible baptism for John took place?

It was a memorial inscription that made everything fall into place, erected in 1880 to the memory of Betty’s brother Abraham Gamble, by his wife Elizabeth.

How on earth could this have helped?  Well, it’s to be found in Pudsey (Betty’s birthplace), on the wall of the Wesleyan Methodist Church, thereby confirming Nonconformity in Betty’s wider family.  It followed that my 3xG gradparents Betty and John might have met on social events between their respective congregations, and therefore the unexpected Nonconformist baptism record for John could be correct.  Together with all the other information, I was now happy to accept the John on the baptism record as my John.  It may seem tenuous, but afterwards, I did find that Betty and Abraham’s mother, Hannah, had also been baptised in the Morley chapel, moving to Pudsey after marriage.  The connection between the two families was an old one; but it was that memorial inscription that tipped the balance of probabilities for me.

As I hope these examples illustrate, we can look upon these death-related records as simply a confirmation of names, dates and places.  Or we can really look at them, wringing out every last clue to better understand our ancestors’ lives.

Do you have any similar examples?  Or are there perhaps as yet unseen clues lurking in the death records on your tree?