UP AASA YOUR GENEALOGY GAME!
What else is there apart from wills? (a closer look at probate records)
ESSENTIAL SEARCH SKILLS TO MASTER
Improve your family history search skills with the Family Tree Academy. This issue, David Annal digs deeper into probate records, and demonstrates how they can help your family history research
David Annal
Throughout the year, the Family Tree Academy will be there to help you grow your genealogy skills.
As ever, the aim will continue to be to help teach more about the search skills and source know-how needed to step up your family history research.
Probate records
In the February issue we took an in-depth look at using and understanding our ancestors’ wills. There’s no question that, when it comes to family history research, wills are the most important records held by the probate courts but there are a number of other types of documents to consider, which were created as part of the process of settling the estates of our deceased ancestors. This month we will look at a selection of these records to see what further evidence they may supply:
• administrations
• inventories
• litigation
• exhibits
• death duty records
Administrations
How did these records come about?
Frequently referred to by the abbreviation ‘Admons’, these are documents which record the granting of ‘letters of administration’ on the estate of someone who died intestate (i.e. without leaving a will). Essentially the courts were appointing someone to perform the same tasks that an executor would undertake if there had been a will.
What chance do I have of finding an ‘Admon’ for my ancestor’s estate?
It’s far from being the case that every person who died without leaving a will would have letters of administration granted on their estate and it’s sometimes not clear why someone went to the trouble of securing a grant of administration but it’s certainly true that these grants were very common.
In most cases, the person appointed by the court was the deceased’s next of kin – their husband/wife or an oldest son for example – but grants could also be made to a creditor, or to someone else who had a financial interest in their estate.
What will these records tell me?
From a purely genealogical perspective, the resulting records are not particularly useful but they can provide some unexpected clues and, if nothing else, the discovery of a grant of administration means that you can stop looking for a will! As a minimum you should expect to get the relationship of the administrator to the intestate (if there was one) but you may get some additional details.