Wills and Administrations; the riches of probate records (205)
Wills are an often overlooked source of information for family history research. However, they can be the richest of documents, confirming family relationships, providing insight into social status and sometimes revealing multiple generations of one family. This course will take you step by step through the various probate documents available, such as wills, administrations and death duty registers, and explain the differences in the probate systems before and after 1858.
You will learn how to search for wills and administrations, including practical examples, how to extract the most genealogically useful information and how to apply your findings to other family history research.
Reading List:
Students often ask us for recommended reading for their courses, that they can look at before the course starts. Here is a suggested book list for this course.
Lesson Headings:
- Introduction to Wills and Administrations
- Wills and Administrations before 1858
- Wills and Administrations after 1858
- Other Probate Documents and Making the most of Wills
Relevant countries: England, Wales
What to expect:
Each lesson includes lesson notes, activities and forum exercises for students to complete during the week and a one-hour live tutorial (text chat or Zoom) with the tutor and the rest of the class. Times for the tutorials are set at the beginning of each course by the tutor.
This is an assessed course. The length of the course given is the number of teaching weeks but students should also allow time in the couple of weeks after the course ends to complete assignments.
Students said:
"A very enlightening and enjoyable course. I had not realised just how much information could be gleaned from a probate record."
"Excellent course and extremely thorough. It's opened up a whole new avenue of primary records I didn't know existed."
"It was really useful creating our own research aid, compiling what we had learned about how to locate wills. I also enjoyed the second assignment, working from real probate documents and piecing a tree together. I was very familiar with the content of wills and yet really didn't know how to track them down, so it was very valuable information. When I had questions or was looking for more detail, Linda was quick to respond and always helpful, and she suggested further reading. I really enjoyed having her as a tutor."
- Tutor: Joe Saunders
- Length: 4 weeks
- Start date: Mon 1 Mar 2027
- Start date: Mon 6 Sep 2027