I love these details

[Mary from Italy]

Ooh, how intriguing!

[Merry]

Originally Posted by Lindsay

Lovely stories

I was recently looking at the Will of an unmarried lady in my tree who died in middle age in the 1720s. She left a small sealed package, 'not to be broken up or meddled with by my executor' , to be given to her cousin John.

Old love letters, maybe? It's a shame I'll never know!

Gosh, she must have really trusted her executor!

[Lindsay]

Originally Posted by Merry

Gosh, she must have really trusted her executor!

It was her brother! Perhaps she knew he was just incurably nosey.

[Olde Crone]

"...but nothing to my son Xopher as he has already cost me one guinea to bring him into the country"

Another one, the widow of a very proper farming family, leaves various sums of money to nine of her ten children, but to the flighty daughter, mother of two illegitimate children "I leave my bed and bedclothes as she has use for them"

The saddest was the inventory for admon of a man who died on the IOM. The inventory went on for pages and contained mostly "half of a broken earthenware pot" etc. Total value of goods to widow was less than one shilling, late 1790s.

OC