Abstracts of PCC Wills 1620

Everybody knows of them.... Few people use them in their research.

They are probably the most under used, and yet most useful source of family history information. They tell us so much! A will normally gives us a whole family, and tells us about what the person owned. Everything from houses and land to spoons and bedding. We can get access to the actual wills, but first we need to locate them. That's where books come in useful. There are two types of books on wills:

• Calendars of Wills

  Names, with dates and places. Arranged yearly for a court where they were proved. Not a lot of detail, but invaluable for tracing if a will exists and where to find it.

• Abstracts of Wills

  A transcript of the main points from wills. All of the beneficiaries and their relationships. Wonderful stuff, as it saves you having to extract the information from old awkward to read hand-written documents. Abstracts are usually published for one court for one year's worth of wills. It doesn't matter if your ancestor didn't die in that particular year - it is the information that they contain about the living people that is important!

Either way, use them to locate copies of the actual originals, and write off to order them. Copies are cheap! Whole family trees can be built up from the information contained in wills!

Lots of information about Wills available from the Parish Chest.