Wills pre 1858

[BlueSavannah]

Hello All,

Is there anywhere online that lists wills that were left before 1858, or do I need to make a trip to search for these?

Regards

[Merry]

There are things you can do, but there's no one place to look unfortunately!

1) Try The National Archives - they have all the PCC Wills but not those proved through other courts of and PCC Administrations.

2) If you have access to FMP they have the Death Duty indexes from 1790-something, so if the person died after that you could try looking for an entry though it's definitely not foolproof - People wrote wills but apparently didn't pay death duties, despite them leaving lots of money and property!

Other than that, it's a case of googling for indexes and or trying catalogues for county record offices. Wills were not always proved where the person lived - it depended on the value of their estate and if they owned property in another county etc. For instance, quite a few of my Hertfordshire ancestors wills were proved through the courts covering Essex and those can be found via SEAX (or whatever it's called now!)

Did you have anyone specific in mind? :rolleyes::)

[BlueSavannah]

Many thanks for the advice Merry. I do have FMP but I dont understand the death duty indexes at all. Is it a case of just trawling through every entry?

I wanted to look to see if Robert Nicholson who died in 1846 (dont know date but he was buried on the 10th Sept 1846 in Monkwearmouth) aged 52.

If there had of been an index of sort, I was going to see if anything came up for my missing Henry Bowin.

[kiterunner]

Yes, you have to trawl through. I can't understand why they haven't made a searchable index by now.

[BlueSavannah]

Thanks Kite,

Not looking forward to this task :(

[JayG]

If he left a will & it was proved in Durham it will be listed here

http://familyrecords.dur.ac.uk/nei/data/intro.php

At some point images of the wills will be added to familysearch like they have with the BT's & marriage bonds.

http://familyrecords.dur.ac.uk/nei/index.htm

[BlueSavannah]

Thank you Jay for the link, really appreciated :)

I do hope images will be added to familysearch in the near future.