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NOTE (Nov 2011): A further set of abstracts covering the period 1822 to 1858 has just been added. The other abstracts were all made from the will registers, which for the Archdeaconry Court of Surrey exists only to 1822. The abstracts for the remaining period to 1858 were made from the original wills. The abstracts include all personal names (testator, beneficiaries, executors, witnesses, overseers, and others) with their relationships, place names, occupations, monetary and other bequests, and descriptions of lands. The indexes include the names of every person mentioned - over a half of a million names - places mentioned (many outside Surrey), subjects (eg occupations) mentioned in the wills, and of dates. Many wills contain rich details of the testator's property, providing a more detailed picture of how your ancestors lived than almost any other genealogical resource. Even if you don't find one of your own ancestors in these records, by searching on date and occupation you may find people living at the same time and in similar cicumstances as your ancestors, so giving you an impression of how your predecessors lived. Wills can provide intriguing sidelights on the relationships between the people mentioned - with the testator expressing clear dislike or distrust of other family members. See example SW/7_865. Other wills give an indication of general preoccupations of people at a particular time in history. See example SW/7_917 This resource, then, is not just for the genealogist wishing to add more names to their family tree. It is unique resource for researching social history within one English county over a period of five hundred years. We would like to express our own thanks to Cliff Webb, for having created one of the most valuable secondary sources anywhere for research into English social and family history. Introduction No experienced genealogist needs telling of the value of wills. They can bridge generations with certainty in a way which parish registers rarely can, and make mention of many people with relationship to the testator stated. The average will mentions 10 people, and many refer to far more; the majority of the people mentioned in a will are related to or are friends of the testator. However, for the full value of wills to be realised they must be abstracted, with every person, place and (as far as possible) subject in the original indexed. The value of abstracts was recognised by the Surrey Record Society, who published two printed volumes of abstracts of Surrey wills between 1915 and 1921 (named "Spage" and "Herringman", after the first testator in each will register). These volumes were later reprinted by West Surrey Family History Society, who subsequently published 39 more volumes of abstracts between 1993 and 2002. In total these publications include over 28,000 abstracts of all extant registered wills proved at the Archdeaconry Court of Surrey and at the Commissary Court of Surrey in the period 1470 to 1856. However the Archdeaconry Court will registers end in 1822 and from 1823 only the filed originals survive. These original wills have since been abstracted so that the Surrey Will Abstracts now includes all Surrey wills proved between 1470 and 1858. On 10th January 1858, ecclesiastical jurisdiction over probate matters was abolished. The last will proved in the Archdeaconry Court of Surrey had probate issued on the 9th January. When the wills were numbered, as the only item in 1858 it was numbered DW/PA/5/1857/16 at the end of the 1857 sequence. The index includes names of over half a million people mentioned in these wills. With the exception of Spage and Herringman all abstracts and the associated indexes in the Surrey & South London Will Abstracts collection were created by Cliff Webb. Cliff Webb has given Origins.net exclusive rights to make the complete set of Surrey & South London Will Abstracts available online. This resource is quite unique; we are aware of no other part of the British Isles where such a resource has been created. Researchers into Surrey ancestors, and social history researchers generally, now have online access to one of the most important sets of data available anywhere. Structure of the abstracts Apart from those of the Archdeaconry Court for 1823-1858, the abstracts were published on microfiche as a set of 41 volumes, each containing abstracts of wills from one or more original registers. This online collection follows the structure of these microfilm abstracts, alllowing easy linkage between the online abstracts, the microfiche publications, and the original registers. The abstracts made by Cliff Webb are considerably fuller than the ones published by the Surrey Record Society (Volumes 1 and 7). Each abstract was compiled with a view to making consultation of the original unnecessary in most circumstances. The abstracts include all personal names and relationships, place names, occupations, bequests of money and, in most cases, bequests of furniture, livestock, clothes and other possessions, and descriptions of lands, plus full transcriptions of inventories where these were attached to the will. Unnecessary legal repetition has been removed. Abstracts follow the structure:
Example SW/16_324 is a typical abstract - the 324th will in Volume 16 (Summary table shows Vol. 16 contains Filed & unregistered Wills from 1572-81). Dated 12 Aug 1577, probate was granted on 16 March 1579 (New Style); we cannot tell exactly when William Thomplinson died, but it must have been between these two dates. Although this is a fairly short abstract, ir contains the names of 8 people other than the testator, with 5 different surnames. Example SW/25_0051, from Volume 25 (Commissary Court of Surrey, 1674-96) has 17 names, with 9 surnames. Some wills have several dozen names. Many wills have inventories attached, and a few wills list goods in such detail that they virtually represent inventories. Example SW/40_259, however, is exceptional. Introductions to volumes Introductory text to each volume contain references to specific abstracts; some abstracts contain references to other abstracts. Any abstract can be retrieved via the Abstract ID search. Particularly comprehensive introductions are those to Intoduction to Volume 1 "Spage", published by Surrey Record Society in 1916, that by Cliff Webb for Volume 5A "Pykman". The latter gives information not just on the Pyman register abstracts, but on wills generally in Tudor times and later; the structure and content of Tudor wills is discussed in detail. Source references The abstracts contain folio references for the original register entry, so that with the Source Document reference you can identify the original will (strictly a copy of the will) held at the London Metropolitan Archives (with the exception of the British Library manuscript abstracted in Volume 5). This Summary Table relates the online abstract references to the original microfiche publications, and provides references to the source documents. Note for ordering copies of wills in Volume 42 you will need to provide London Metropolitan Archives with document reference, eg. DW/PA/5/1826, plus the testator surname. Click here to view an image of an original entry. Filed wills, original wills, registered wills Although the term 'original wills' is sometimes used to refer to filed wills, this is actually a misnomer; most filed wills are office copies, not the originals, which presumably went to the executor. It must also be emphasised that these abstracts are of will registers, ie books into which copies of the wills were transcribed. Almost all the wills registered have as counterparts a filed copy of the will. While some of these filed copies have been examined to try to fill in the few gaps in legibility, etc., the vast majority have not. In some cases, therefore, there may be substantial differences. For example, it is far from unknown for a list of debtors and debts, attached to or part of the filed will, not to be recorded in the will register. Having found a will of interest, therefore, the thorough searcher will also examine the filed will. To facilitate this process, the reference number of the filed will has been given - these are the references beginning DW/PA/5 (for Archdeaconry Court wills) or DW/PC/5 (for Commissary Court wills); the registers have references beginning DW/PA/7 (for the Archdeaconry Court) and DW/PC/7 (for the Commissary Court). Inventories Many wills are annotated with the value of the inventory and occasionally with the date the inventory was taken. This information has been added in round brackets at the end of the will, after the reference. Inventories can provide an extraordinary amount of detail about the testator's property, as in that of Ann Turner Example SW/40_259. While inventories do not survive for all periods, some wills list goods in such detail that they virtually represent inventories, as in Example SW/22_70. Where inventories were attached to the will they have been fully transcribed. |
