And, as a help towards this, he cannot do better than provide himself with a work by William Whitmore, entitled Ancestral Tablets.[1] These are a collection of Diagrams and Pedigrees, so arranged that eight generations of ancestors can be recorded in a manner which is plain, simple, and easily understood. It is difficult to explain this ingenious system on paper, but a glance at it is almost sufficient to show its method of working.
The merest tyros in genealogy, or those more advanced in the study, will find these tablets invaluable, as they do away with the difficulty of having to draw up a family tree for themselves.
But, whatever kind of “tree” is adopted or worked out, the study of wills should be productive of new ancestors with which to embellish it.
If working in London, Somerset House will be the happy hunting-ground of the will-searcher, and in various parts of England there are District Registries at which old wills are also kept.
Perhaps, in a sense, the searcher in Ireland has most need of all to be grateful to the powers that be with regard to this aspect of his pedigree work, for, practically speaking, all Irish wills can be found in Dublin. The later ones are in the Probate Office, and the earlier, with which searchers will be mainly interested, in the Dublin Record Office, both these offices being situated in the “Four Courts.”
But, wherever he is working, the wills will naturally divide themselves into those proved in the Prerogative and Diocesan Courts.
In England, up to 1858, wills were proved in the Prerogative Courts of Canterbury and York, or were to be found in the various Diocesan Courts. There were also a large number (nearly four hundred) of “peculiar courts,” which were depositories of such documents. Later wills are all kept at Somerset House, and a great number of earlier ones, in ponderously bound volumes of copies, can also be consulted there.
Suitable indexes are everywhere provided, and the searcher should study the contents of these, under the name for which he is looking.
Let us suppose he has traced the ancestry of a family of the name of Grey down to a certain Thomas Grey of Larchfield, Blankshire, who died in 1790.
His next step is to find Thomas Grey’s father, and afterwards he will trace his line farther back.