Genealogy Chat

Hi all, I am trying to find the will of Robert West who died in Roche Cornwall in 1801. Has anyone any suggestions where I could look or who I could email? Thanks John

If the estate was large enough, it would be proved outside Cornwall (see notes below). Otherwise, I'd give the Cornwall Records Office (see message 4 below) a ring to see what they could do to help, or put a request on the Record Offices board in case someone who is going there could take a look for you. Taken from National Archives leaflet: Where to Look for a Will or Grant of Administration While a few original wills may be found among private papers, the most reliable place to search for a will is among the records of the court where probate was granted, i.e. where the will was given official approval empowering the executor to act. In cases where no will was made, letters of administration were granted to the next-of-kin, giving him or her the authority to distribute the intestate's estate. (The word 'estate' is used here meaning the personalty, i.e. chattels, cash, debts, leases, etc., of the deceased. The ecclesiastical courts had no jurisdiction over bequests of freehold property. If such bequests were in dispute, recourse was had to Chancery or Common Law. Mixed wills, that is of personalty and realty, were nevertheless registered in the ecclesiastical courts.) Prior to the Court of Probate Act of 1857, the proving of wills and the granting of administrations lay with ecclesiastical courts and some manorial courts. There was an elaborate network of probate courts; the factors which determined in which court a grant should be made were the place of death and the size and distribution of the estate in question. See Anthony J Camp, Wills and their whereabouts (private publication, 1974) for background information on wills and court hierarchy. The searcher for a pre-1858 proved will or grant of administration has two initial problems, namely to decide in which court the grant was made, and to ascertain where the records of that court are now kept. The estate of a person of small means was usually dealt with in the lowest permissible court, that of the archdeacon. The will of a person with goods in more than one archdeaconry was proved in the diocesan court. There were also various 'peculiar' jurisdictions, such as those exercised by the deans and chapters of cathedrals. Those leaving goods in more than one diocese or peculiar to the value of £5 (£10 in London) or more were deemed to be in possession of bona notabilia and, as such, their estates came under the cognizance of one or other of the provincial courts, the Prerogative Court of Canterbury or the Prerogative Court of York. If goods were held in both provinces the grant could be made either solely in the court of the Archbishop of Canterbury, or in both provincial courts. The records of the minor probate courts are deposited in county record offices or other local repositories. Records of the Prerogative Court of York are held at the Borthwick Institute, University of York, Heslington, York YO10 5DD. Indexes to wills proved by the Prerogative and Exchequer Courts of York 1853-1858 are now available at www.britishorigins.com as part of an ongoing project to index the whole series (NB not sure of the date of the leaflet, perhaps worth checking how much has now been indexed). For more information about probate sources on the internet see Online Sources below (not included here, will go back and look). The location of the records is explained in Jeremy Gibson and Else Churchill, Probate jurisdictions: where to look for wills (Federation of Family History Societies, 2002). The problem of deciding on the right court is more complex, and it may be necessary to search the records of several. 2. Documents Available in The National Archives 2.1 Death Duty Registers If the grant of probate or administration was made after 1796 and the court of probate is not known, the Legacy Duty Registers and their indexes may be useful (The National Archives reference: IR 26 and IR 27 ). If legacy duty was payable on the estate in question these registers indicate in which court the grant was made. There is a Research Guide entitled How to Interpret Death Duty Registers on the contents and use of these registers. 2.2 Registers of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury The only probate court records deposited in The National Archives are those of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, 1383-1858. The Prerogative Court of Canterbury was the metropolitan probate court for the Southern Province and, as such, was by far the busiest and most prestigious court. It sat in London, in Doctors' Commons, and had overriding jurisdiction in all England and Wales. It had sole jurisdiction where the deceased posessed bona notabilia in two bishoprics or two peculiars in the southern province, and also over estates of people who died at sea or abroad leaving personal property here. In the early 19th century the Bank of England ruled that, for their purposes, when transfers of government stock holding were involved, only Prerogative Court of Canterbury grants of probate were valid. This meant a considerable increase in business. Many of the smaller courts were, in fact, moribund by 1858. A searcher for a 19th. century will has much more chance of finding it in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury records than a searcher for a will of an earlier date.

(cont'd) Ledgers of Bank of England will abstracts 1717-1845, are at the Society of Genealogists, 14 Charterhouse Buildings, Goswell Road, London EC1M 7BA (tel: 020 7251 8799). There is a printed Index to the Bank of England Will Extracts 1807-1845 (Society of Genealogists, 1991) - depending on how long the will took to sort out, it may have been proved as late as 1807 etc. The indexes are available online to subscribers at: www.britishorigins.*com (remove star). The records fall roughly into two categories: those emanating from the ordinary common form proving of a straight-forward will or the granting of a simple administration, and those records relating to the procedure in the contesting of a grant. Obviously, if there was litigation much more information will be forthcoming: the depositions of witnesses, pleadings, exhibits, and so on. 2.3 Wills and Administrations The most useful and informative series are the court copies of the proved wills (PROB 11 ) and the original wills (PROB 10 ). All wills in PROB 11 are now available online at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documentsonline. They have been fully indexed and are searchable by name, place, occupation and date. Probate Acts Books (PROB 8 ) and Act Books of Limited Probate (PROB 9 ) identify the parish where the testator died. The Administration Act Books (PROB 6 and PROB 7 ) provide more or less all the information that is obtainable in common form grants of administration. The means of reference to wills, administrations and the act books are the Register Books (PROB 12 ), available on the open shelves. They are arranged annually by the initial letter of the deceased, but not in strict alphabetical order. See also Will indexes and other probate material in the Library of the Society of Genealogists, ed N J Newington-Irving (Society of Genealogists, 1996), and the printed abstracts in American Wills and Administrations in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, 1610-1857, compiled by P W Coldham (Genealogical Publishing Co. Inc. 1989).

Other online sources: Also available at www.britishorigins.*com (remove star) are: Bank of England Will Extracts Index 1717-1845 Contains 60,523 entires from 1717-1845. The contain extracts of wills of those who died with monies in public funds, as well as abstracts of orders made for stockholders who went bankrupt or were declared lunatic. Most wills in this index were proved by the Prerogative Court of Canterbury

But if it was proved in Cornwall (from Genuki): Before 1858 Cornwall formed the Archdeaconry of Cornwall in the diocease of Exeter and province of Canterbury. Apart from the Prerogative Court of Canterbury (PCC), most probate records for the county are at the Cornwall Record Office. For 1800 to 1857, there is a consolidated index, which also includes Estate Duty Office Wills and Admons for courts whose records have been destroyed (1812 to 1857). Records of the Peculiars of the Dean and Chapter of Exeter, which include five Cornish parishes, were also destroyed. Post-1811 Estate Duty Office copies of Wills and Admons from these courts are now in the Cornwall Record Office. Abstract of Wills and Admons, 1796 - 1811, for these and other courts should still be found in the Estate Duty Registers at the Public Record Office. The Devon and Cornwall Record Society has microfilmed the index to these records. Many Abstracts of Cornish Wills 1690 to 1859 are available on-line, and the Cornish Wills proved at the Prerogative Court of Canterbury also has a list of persons who held lands in Cornwall, or resided in Cornwall, and had their Wills proved at the PCC. I'd give the Cornwall Records Office a ring to see what they could do to help, or put a request on the Record Offices board in case someone who is going there could take a look for you.

Thanks Ivy - that was very informative. I will try the Record Offices Board first of all and failing that then I will phone the Cornwall Records Office. Kind regards John