Informative will

We know that many members have been waiting a long time to receive copies of wills. Hopefully my tale will give hope that maybe, just maybe, the long awaited document will prove very useful.

I bought this will, dated 1848, last year via a link on Find My Past rather than from the probate office. It arrived a lot faster!



My great grandfather was born a Roman Catholic. There are few Catholic registers on-line but I managed to trace great great grandmother's line back thanks to a CD published several years ago containing record transcripts from the Catholic church in Scarisbrick.

My great great great grandfather Henry was born in 1805; he was the son of William and Elizabeth, who was 10 years older than her husband and had been married before.
William and Elizabeth had two children, Henry and Ann, born in 1806. I had the marriage for Ann in 1828, but nothing after this.
Elizabeth died in 1834; William died in 1848.
In the 1841 census, William is listed as a 60 year old farmer; the other members of the household were all listed as servants.

William does not appear to have been born in Scarisbrick. There are no baptisms there with the right surname from the start of the transcriptions in 1773 till the baptism of Henry in 1805. I did not know his birth place, the names of his parents, or if he had any siblings


There my knowledge stood for several years as I live too far away from Lancashire Record Office to research in person.
Then Find My Past uploaded a new database – Lancashire Wills and Probate 1457 to 1858. I found William's will listed, bought it and was amazed at the previously unknown information it gave.



The major beneficiary was his son Henry, confirming I had the correct will.

William left a bequest to his un-named wife. He married again in 1842, and the marriage certificate names his father, another William. But I do realise this may not have actually been the father's name as it is the same as the groom and could be an error.

He left a bequest to his daughter Nancy (Ann) and named her husband and place of residence. I now know her first husband died in 1830 and she had remarried; I have added her descendants to my family tree.

He left a bequest to his "natural son Henry Porter son of Margaret Porter and now residing in Scarisbrick and who for some period during his minority lived with me". I have now added a totally unsuspected branch to my tree.

Finally, he named as executors his legitimate son Henry, his illegitimate son Henry Porter and his brother Thomas of Scarisbrick. I now know the name of a sibling, which gave me yet another branch to add to my family tree.
And Thomas gives a clue to William's birth place - Thomas lived to 1872 and the censuses tell me where he was born.



All this information from just one will! While few wills tell us so much we didn't already know, there is always the chance we will find new information.

 

I did not even have to send for a will for my 6x great-grandfather, Joshua Joyce 1699-1760. I just followed a leaf and there it was. The complete text, in handwriting and then transcribed in today's English. It gave a lot more information than I originally had, since I only had the name of my 5x great-grandfather; this gave the names of his daughters, as well as in-law names that I also had so they just confirmed what I already knew. He left most of his estate to his son James, but one hundred pounds each to five of his daughters, to be given on the occasion of their marriage of 21st birthday, whichever came first. Another daughter was already married so not mentioned in that paragraph, but was further down. According to the will, he was a baker.