I'm writing because I had an idea for a new book called Using Historic Wills and Probate Records to Build Your Family Tree. This idea grew out of an invitation I had some time ago from the local family history society to give a talk on the subject.
I mentioned the general topic of using wills as a resource in some genealogy groups that I'm in (Facebook etc) and it generated quite a bit of interest. I think, based on feedback from those groups and from my presentation, that people underestimate how much genealogical information they can find in wills and in any event they simply don't know where to find the wills.
I should also mention that a couple of years ago I self-published a book about 19th century wills in Newfoundland called "Sound Mind and Memory". It was basically a history of how we got where we are now with wills and probate law. Though a book like that is never going to be a best-seller, it created a satisfying stir among local historians and I got some fabulous positive feedback from them, I mention this really to demonstrate how much time I've spent digging through dusty old wills for research purposes.
I've attached an outline of what I think the book should cover. As always, I expect I'll think of more sub-topics as I go, but it's pretty detailed. .
Originally as I developed this outline I considered talking about searching international sources as well as Canadian, given that everyone came from somewhere else. I ended up removing those potential chapters because the topic was getting so big. Searching international sources could almost be books of their own. What do you think about including international searches? When I presented the topic locally, I concentrated on Canadian and UK sources because our local population is so homogenous. My question, though, would be where to draw the line. After all, Canada has immigrants from every country and continent.
As always, I want this book to be practical and a really useful guide for people.
I've often checked for books on this topic. I have found several American ones but so far not a Canadian one. Given that our legal and court systems are nothing like the Americans, those books are of no value to anyone wanting to search Canadian records.
I realize that Self-Counsel books are known for their "extras" that come in the download. I have at least two checklists to add that I already use myself. One is a summary of a found will where I record what was in the will (variations on the name, relationships, date, place, occupation, citation/location of the will, etc). Attached to that is a "check next" list where I make quick notes about new clues to follow up as a result of reading the will. Then I check them off as I do them.
The second resembles an excerpt from a family tree in that it starts with the testator in the middle then names any people/relations that were mentioned in the will. This makes it easy to pop the new info right into the overall family tree that the searcher is presumably working on.
I also anticipate creating lists and/or charts of various sources broken down by province. This could be really handy using the download because it could include links to click on.
I see this book as complementary to services like ancestry. Yes, they might find a will on the site, but would they know what they were looking at? Would they get the most out of that document that they could? This is especially true of probate documents that are usually written in shorthand that may not make a lot of sense without guidance.
Perhaps knowing that a will or probate record can be such a goldmine might encourage more people to seek out that kind of record.
I also hope that the book will open all kinds of doors for people who have been through a couple of big sites, didn't find that much, and don't really know where else to look.
The big sites only have a limited number of wills and many are American. There are treasure-troves of wills on smaller sites (e. g Chebucto
