I had a wonderful stroke of luck this week! I broke through a longstanding brick wall on my Field line, confirmed using my ancestors’ wills. As suspected, the middle name Palmer used across several generations was a massive clue. However, the partnership that brought it about was back at the turn of the eighteenth century and in a different place. Therefore, it’s taken a while to find it.
Because the find was not where I expected it to be, I was extra-specially careful to ensure I had all my ducks lined up evidence-wise. I couldn’t claim this Edward Field as my own just because he was born at the right time and married a Palmer. These are both common names, and extremely common at the time in the parish where I found them. They were both prominent families in the area, and both had many branches. Using ancestors’ wills and wills of others in these local families allowed me to pinpoint where they fit in, and why the name Francis popped up as the eldest son’s forename for several generations too! Now I’ve untangled all the Field and Palmer lines I can sense a couple of one-name studies in the wind. I know how I’m wired…
I spent all this week burying my head in wills, so I was reminded why it would be a good topic for this week’s blog. They are sadly often under-utilised as a resource, and often so rich with detail.
Why You Should Look For Your Ancestors’ Wills
Wills are a treasure trove of information. Some of the uses you can put them to are:
- Confirming your research
- Untangling family branches
- Very useful when the same names are appearing over and over in different branches. Wills will often make it clear who is who.
- Determining not only family relationships but often their quality
- Who did they leave out that was still alive or who did they leave an insultingly trivial amount of money? (A caveat, a child ‘cut off with only a shilling’ may have received their inheritance already. Their parent may have set them up in a business or home, and the ‘shilling’ is just to prevent them arguing that they were left out of the will as an oversight).
- Sometimes they used very blunt and/or revealing comments to explain why certain bequests were made. (See the snippet of another of my ancestor’s wills below as an example!)
- Discovering the married names of the daughters
- The testator would often list their children’s names. The daughters were listed using their married surnames. Possibly the husband’s name and the names of their children would appear too.
- Finding an unexpected place of origin
- The testator would usually give instructions regarding their burial preferences. Many just specified the local churchyard. However, if they had moved to the vicinity during their life they may have asked to be buried in a family vault in their original village’s church for example.
- Hearing the voice of your ancestor
- Not literally of course! But this is one of the few common documents where you will get a feel for your ancestor’s personality. It’s a lot more freeform than certificates for example. Unless your ancestor left a journal, diary or memoir this may be as close as you get to reading their thoughts and opinions in their own voice.
What Is Contained In Your Ancestors’ Wills?
This can vary a little, but a formal will often follows this fairly standard pattern:
- Their name, occupation and location
- A statement that they are of sound mind
- Their burial request
- Who they appoint as their executor
- Often a spouse or adult child if widowed
- Sometimes a brother, brother in law or close friend
- Instructions for distribution of their property, listing their beneficiaries
- The date the will was prepared
- This could be very close to the death date, or years before if they were organised!
- The signature (or ‘cross’ if they were illiterate) of the testator and the witnesses.
- The date probate was granted
- This could also be very close to the death date if straightforward, or years afterwards if it was complicated or contested!
What Won’t You (Usually) Find?
- Wills of married women
- these are rare before 1882 as up till then, women did not have their own property. Anything they brought into the marriage became the property of their husband. Therefore she had no legal right to leave anything to anyone.
- Wills of spinsters, on the other hand, can be gold, especially if there were a lot of nieces and nephews!
- Once a woman was widowed, she may have had a will drawn up if she did not intend to get remarried.
- A list of every possession
- This is called an ‘inventory’ and is a separate document to the will. If it survives, it will be located in the probate file.
- The inventory is well worth looking for, as literally EVERYTHING got listed. It provides a fascinating snapshot into your ancestor’s life. My ancestor John Girling (father of the Charles named above) made his own inventory. This was quite unusual and slightly OCD, as he also repeatedly updated it over the years. He went into excruciating detail which was great, as it revealed his previously unknown military life, but sadly not the identity of his mother. He noted the subject, artist and value of every painting he owned except her portrait, about which he was irritatingly vague.
- Dates of births, marriages and deaths
- This is not the document for finding these details. You may find out from the will that marriages have happened, or children are still minors, or other family members are deceased, but the dates will not appear. However, using the date the will was signed can help narrow down a timeframe for those events and help you locate them in the appropriate sources.
Stay tuned for the next gripping episode…
Next week I will be looking at and dismantling some of the reasons why wills are so commonly ignored, as well as how to find and use them.
In the meantime, has anyone found anything in wills that they never would have known without seeing their will? For me, finding out Charles Girling’s ‘wife’ was actually his housekeeper was an eye-opener, and has saved me countless hours of continuing searches for their marriage! Leave your comments below…