CPP wills etc

[Ed McKie]

some time ago ( a couple of years) I purchased a will on line, which is the usual scan of the copy made at the time. The death occured in 1838. It now occurs to me to wonder ( I am a bit slow these days) if there is in fact any other information available about this will. For instance, is the original likely to be still at the PRO or just this copy.? Is there likely to be any info as to who applied for probate, the value of the effects etc.? As the will was made in 1820 and the death occured a long time after, there is no guarantee that the appointed executors were still around.

Cheers..Ed

[Colin Moretti]

Hello Ed

I assume that you mean PCC wills since you downloaded it from PRO; they're the only ones available.

TNA (PRO as was) have a helpful leaflet on the subject, you can view it online at
https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/c...sLeafletID=168
If it's a copy from the PROB series it should say at the end to whom probate was granted, and the date.

Good luck

Colin

[Mythology]

Ed, before I wear my fingers out on guesswork, is this the bird stuffer?

[Ed McKie]

[QUOTE=Colin Moretti]Hello Ed

I assume that you mean PCC wills since you downloaded it from PRO; they're the only ones available.

Yes of course silly me!!.... But you knew anyway :-)

Thanks for the suggestion will have a look at the info.

Cheers..Ed

[Ed McKie]

Ed, before I wear my fingers out on guesswork, is this the bird stuffer?

Yes..tis he.... still beavering away ( no pun intended) trying to work out what happened to quite an extensive collection of stuffed birds and animals.
Have now identified a Sun insurance policy of 1816 at the Guildhall which I have sent for, this might give another snippet of info.

Myth..you either have a wonderful memory or a very sophisticated date retrieval system that leaves me goggling.

Cheers..Ed ( touchtypist ridiculous- to sort of borrow a phrase)

[Mythology]

I expect that the 1838 date stuck in my mind because of stumbling across him in those Bunhill Fields burials when looking for one of mine.

As Colin says, the probate date and who it was granted to should be at the end of the registered copy anyway, so hopefully you've got that now, but the probate date - the important thing for further investigation, as that's what they're filed by - is also in the "Documents online" entry, 17 November 1838, so ...

You have the registered copy from PROB11/1902.
Originals are in PROB10. Assuming that yours has survived (and you'd be very unlucky to find that it hadn't with one as late as 1838) it will be in PROB10/5816, this being the box that covers surnames G-K for November 1838.

Now, I'm very keen on getting copies of the originals, I don't trust those sloppy court clerks - but I can get to Kew in not much more than an hour on a good day, two hours at the worst. I have never used their online ordering service to have things dug out by them and sent to me, so I have no idea what the likely cost would be. I think they charge you about a tenner just for asking, don't they? The reference is to the box, not to the individual will - somebody will have to rummage through, untie the relevant bundle of folded up wills, find your one, flatten it out, and take a copy. I expect they'd charge you for the time involved, not just the copying. Also, it's unlikely that they will just slap it on the photocopier - I'd expect to pay for a scan.

Yes, OK, maybe I'm being a bit pessimistic but, trying to put myself in your shoes, I have to ask "Is it worth it for the possible extra info?".

(continues)

[Mythology]

In theory, you might, for example, find that Thomas Hall made his will on a couple of sheets of paper torn out of his diary, with vital family information on the other side of the paper - but, realistically, it isn't very probable.
The registered copy, in which he is "of" a certain place (i.e. that's where he was living when he made the will) won't tell you where and when he died. The original will almost certainly have both date and place of death written on it in the notes - but as this is 1838, you have a death cert, so you know that anyway.
Generally speaking (apart from value, which I'll come to later) when we are considering extra *information* rather than the desirability of getting the real thing instead of a clerk's transcript, that's about all you're likely to find by getting the original. I do have one of mine which states in the extra notes that the deceased was "formerly of Rumford [sic] afterward of of [sic] Hornchurch in the County of Essex but late of Upminster in the same County" instead of just "of Upminster" given in the registered copy, which was handy as I didn't know that he'd been in Hornchurch in between times and it led me straight to a few things which would probably otherwise have taken longer to find by casting the guesswork net, but most simply have the date and place of death.

Now - value.
A "sworn value" will be given - have a look at your registered copy, this is likely to be given in the margin anyway - but this can be pretty meaningless.
In the will of one of mine, for example, there are a number of specific sums bequeathed to various people, totalling well over £400, with the residue to the grandchildren, and the sworn value is given as "Under £600".
She didn't have anything like £600. The sums actually dished out were not much more than half those bequeathed, e.g., the daughter who should have had £200 got £103/12/11 (and lost £1/0/8 of that in tax), and if you add them all up it comes to only £206/5/10. One of them doesn't work out percentagewise so I suspect a clerical error here, I reckon that the one given as £50/16/5 is probably £51/16/5, but even at a total of £207/5/10, that's a long way short of £600!

(continues)

[Mythology]

Where did this info come from? Not from the original will - from the death duty register, which, incidentally, also gave me the occupation and "address" (parish) of the executor, a cousin.
Assuming that he's there (most are, but he won't be if no tax was payable) death duty register entries seem to be rather variable, but I'd reckon that the entry is more likely to provide you with additional useful information than the few extra bits on the original will as opposed to the registered copy.
Somewhere in the leaflets on the TNA site there should be one or more relating to the death duty registers, including an explanation of the abbreviations used in the entries but, basically ...

You use the index (IR27) to locate the appropriate register (IR26).
IR27/245 is the index that covers surnames E-J for 1838 wills, so that's what we'd look up if we were at Kew or the FRC, but actually we can look it up without even knowing the reference and without leaving home at very little cost. Currently, it's on the "National Archivist" site - but as of tomorrow, Thursday 20th, it will be on 1837online. I expect you'll have bought some credits with them anyway, but if not, I have plenty.
Assuming he's there, once we have the folio number from that index, we then know what we need in IR26.
For surnames H-J in 1838:
Folios 1 - 219: IR26/1485
Folios 220 - 440: IR26/1486
Folios 441 - 659: IR26/1487
Folio 660: Not listed, presumably blank, missing or catalogue error.
Folios 661 - 819: IR26/1488

Unless you are in a mad panic, which I very much doubt, don't pay silly money to TNA to get the register entry. These are on film at both Kew and, more conveniently, the FRC, and it'll be a two page printout at a mere 20p per page. In the course of typing this, I've just had confirmation that my delayed home move will be happening at the end of next week, so total chaos is not far away. I'll probably be completely out of circulation for a while and certainly won't be going anywhere for a while, but if you don't get any other offers I hope to be back to normal by about June. I don't go to Kew that often, but visits to the FRC are usually reasonably frequent - and even if I don't actually want anything there myself, it's only a couple of minutes walk from the LMA, so it can tie in with that.

[Mythology]

Follow up ...

1837online obviously have your interests at heart so are working on Australian time, not UK time.

I popped in there about 15 mins ago, roughly 11 p.m. our time, and the stuff transferred over from the National Archivist site is already there.
So, as I wanted to see how they've arranged it anyway, I used your Thomas as an experiment, and I'm 99.99% certain that we have him.
Name of the executor from your registered copy would be handy as absolute confirmation just in case there were two of them in the same place, but I have Thomas Hall, residence City Road, which fits your boy, on folio 645, so that's IR26/1487 for the register.

[Mythology]

"Name of the executor from your registered copy would be handy as absolute confirmation"

Don't bother - it's him.

I'm so used to the fact that by this time all wills are in the same set of death duty registers irrespective of the court they were proved in that I didn't think to look at the court listed because, from the point of view of looking it up in the register, it doesn't make any odds!
Silly me - as it's PCC, a quick prod at Documents Online gives us any other Thomas Hall 1838 PCC wills and we can compare the two lists.

There are only two other Thomas Hall PCC wills in 1838, both easily identified because they are much earlier in the year (actual dates are not given in the death duty register index but the folios it refers to are in date order) and because they didn't move - the one who's Lambeth in the will is listed as Lambeth in the DD reg index, and the one who's of No.8 Allington Street Pimlico in the will is listed as Allington Street Pimlico in the DD reg index.

So that's both of them dealt with, we don't have an awkward blighter who made his will in Timbuktu but fell over in City Road who might get mixed up with your boy.