Wills from 1858 can now be ordered online

Family Events

A new online service has appeared (in Beta from) which allows you to look up the probate calendars online from 1858 and order copies of the wills at £10 each (irrespective of length). It can be found at https://probatesearch.service.gov.uk/#wills. I haven't used it yet (having just ordered a will by post the old fashioned way) but the interface looks easy enough.

A very busy time - News & Updates for Mid January 2013

Not only have I been busy with normal posts, after the break for Christmas - but there have been a lot of other things going on . Some of the following brief notes relate to comments, etc., made last year which have only just surfaced as unreported in an attempt to clear part of my 2012 mailbox.

There have been a number of improvement to familysearch recently and if you search for your non-conformist ancestors you may be offered a link to the BMDregisters.co.uk web site (associated with TheGenealogist.co.uk site), where you can see (for a fee) the original registers.

I have updated my Hertfordshire Wills page to include a direct link to the National Archives' very useful online guide to Wills and probate.

The WayBack Machine has been undergoing changes and now covers 240,000,000,000 URL and you can search the Web as it was from 1996 to about a month ago.This can be useful in chasing old genealogy and local history pages which have "vanished", sometimes because the person who maintained them has died, and their account closed. See latest blog report.

Tewin

Anonymous comments that "Henry Cowper married his cousin Maria Judith Cowper daughter of John Cowper DD Rector of Berkhamsted. Thus the poet and hymnist William Cowper (God works in mysterious ways, etc.) was his brother in law." Henry Cowper of Tewin (main site: Tewin Water).

When Kathy recently asked about James Thomson (born Scotland, from Watford in the First World War) I concentrated on the Hertfordshire end of the story. Anthony has now located a James Thomson who fits the bill, and who had an earlier Army career - See  James THOMSON, Watford, World War 1. Do you know any other soldiers with Hertfordshire connections who was on the HMT Prince Edward when she was torpedoed on the way to Gallopoli?

The spider which indexes my web site every Friday night to support the Search facility reported that at the beginning of 2013 it was indexing 4095 text pages  (This excluded my many index pages and menus).

Kevin Pangbourn added a comment to  A Rothschild funded trip to Canada (main site: PANGBORN, Tring, 1868-1906) about Frederick Pangbourn.

Dave Bower has written to add some reminiscences to the story of the Briden family of bakers of Bengeo.

John Martin is researching long-lost Hertfordshire Youth Hostels at Thundridge, Bishops Stortford, Buntingford and Puckeridge and I have provide him with high resolution digitized image of Mill House, Back Street, Thundridge (a Youth Hostel between 1931 and 1935) for the YHA archives which are now held at Birmingham University (online provisional catalogue) 

Anthony suggests the possibly mis-recorded name "Zigner" in census returns, reported on Israel Loveridge, Romany & Knife Grinder, should probably be "Elijah".

I had a surprising number of visitors a few days ago. Within a few hours of posting Census Humour the post was visited by 180 people! I was very surprised until I realised that the post mention a suspected dog called "Diddy Daddylum" and there is an American Rapper known by the name of Diddy!

I also got several other messages, which will not be reported here unless the sended provides more information. However it is perhaps worth commenting one was an example of a common problem among the people who ask questions - the inability to distinguish between HerTfordshire and HerEfordshire.

Subjects "C"

Clocks &
Watches

I have progressed with the task of adding the new format picture buttons to selected pages and, for example I have created new picture buttons for clocks and watches and cycling. See Subjects "C" for how this will be shown in the indexes.

I have also extended the Men at work page and made more links to it (but many more need making!)

Donations for the Mentally Ill of Hertfordshire

So far this year £80 has been donated electronically including a payment made directly to the charity rather than through the special collecting box. Thanks to those responsible.

Buying Hertfordshire Wills Online

I have just received the following email from Origins.net

Hertfordshire Wills Index: 1415-1857 now free to search on the National Wills index, plus copies available for ordering online!

Details of over 27,630 individuals can now be searched for FREE on the National Wills Index on Origins.net.

This index seeks to embrace in one alphabetical sequence all the wills (both original and registered copies), inventories, administration bonds, accounts and other related documents which survive among the records of the Archdeaconries of Huntingdon (Hitchin Division) and St Albans now held at Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies.

Coverage may be summarised as follows:

• Archdeaconry of Huntingdon (Hitchin Division):
  
  Original wills (together with some inventories), 1557-1857 (Ref, HW); will registers, 1557-1843 (Ref, HR); inventories, 1568-1789 (Ref, AHH22 includes some administration bonds); administration bonds and accounts, 1609-1857 (Ref, AHH23).
• Archdeaconry of St Albans:
  
  Original wills, including administration bonds and inventories filed with them, 1518-1857 (Ref, AW); will registers, also including grants of administration, 1415-1857 (Ref, AR); inventories, 1518-1764 (Ref, A25); no original probate accounts are known to have survived for this archdeaconry.

Copies of the originals can be ordered online for £10GBP. These are supplied digitally by Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies and delivered via a PDF to your email address.

 Warning 

These wills can also be ordered directly from HALS at £6GBP a time