Track Down A Will

Don’t neglect this rich resource

We go out of our way to look for wills because they’re such valuable documents that often name several generations of the family, helping to verify birth, marriage and death records. This is particularly vital before civil registration commenced. Many wills proved before 1858 are held in county record offices and may not have been indexed online. Those proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury can be downloaded from nationalarchives.gov.uk, findmypast.co.uk, ancestry. co.uk and thegenealogist.co.uk, making them useful for trawling all those wills for people with the same surname from a particular region to establish family ties and build up a picture of the wider family. The complete National Probate Calendar from 1858 onwards is searchable at probatesearch.service.gov.uk.