London Wills and Probate - ancestry

[kiterunner]

http://search.ancestry.co.uk/search/db.aspx?dbid=1704

It includes images of the actual wills, and it also includes Admons (= administrations). Happy hunting! And tell us about your finds!

[kiterunner]

Inevitably, the transcribers have got confused by names such as "William Streadick Carpenter of..." and indexed his name as William Carpenter when Carpenter is just his occupation!

[Phoenix]

Does it say which courts anywhere? There are clearly several missing as wills I've seen at LMA are not there. (London had oodles of different courts)

[kiterunner]

I can't see anything saying which courts, but it does say:

This database contains wills dating from 1523 to 1857 held by the London Metropolitan Archives. These are original wills only and do not include wills or administrations found in will registers or act books which are accessible on site at the London Metropolitan Archives. These do not include wills proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury.

I'm not sure whether that bit about "accessible on site" means that it doesn't include the wills that are on the London Signatures site yet:
http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/wills/

[Phoenix]

I really don't know what they mean. I assume the second sentence means courts whose original records are not held by LMA.

It actually looks as if a fair chunk are wills for rural Surrey.

[Jill]

Bingo!

A brickwall has fallen...I knew my 4x great grandfather John Crisp married and had 5 children in St Clement Danes parish but knew nothing of his parentage, now I've found him being granted adminstration of his mother's estate - her name was Elizabeth, she was a widow of St Andrews. Holborn and died in Aug 1798!

[Asa]

Wonderful! Have found the will of my ancestor Benjamin Connell - I didn't know it existed and never found it at the LMA. Good job some of the transcriptions are dodgy or it would be too easy :-)

[Langley Vale Sue]

Yesssssssss! I've found my 6x G grandfather's will

Thanks Phoenix for saying that a fair chunk are from rural Surrey. I never thought Send and Ripley in Surrey would be on there so I wouldn't have bothered to look if you hadn't said.

Thanks also Kite for telling us about the actual transcriptions of the wills being online.

I'm a very happy bunny tonight - just got to decipher it all now

[Lindsay]

** sigh **

None of mine appear. I think I'm going to have to accept they didn't have anything worth leaving

[Jill]

Originally Posted by Jill

Bingo!

A brickwall has fallen...I knew my 4x great grandfather John Crisp married and had 5 children in St Clement Danes parish but knew nothing of his parentage, now I've found him being granted adminstration of his mother's estate - her name was Elizabeth, she was a widow of St Andrews. Holborn and died in Aug 1798!

Back to the drawing board, not mine after all, he was a brassfounder and another record has him brassfounding when my John was 5.