Everyone has a different way of approaching their family history, and a unique motive for doing so. For many people, it is natural human curiosity, for others a need for some kind of escapism from the routine of everyday life, or perhaps a search for identity and a desire to learn more about our make-up, to discover who we are and where we have come from.

What are you aiming at?

You have lots of possible avenues to research, but at the outset you need to decide whether, for instance, you will begin by tracing your father’s line as far back as possible, or perhaps you will try to tackle your direct female line (your mother’s mother, her mother, and so on). Taking the second option will mean that the surname you are searching for will change with every generation.

You might decide to research each of your grandparents, giving you four different surnames to explore, or perhaps try to discover all you can about each of your great, great grandparents. The second option will keep you busy, since you will have sixteen different names to find, possibly widely scattered around the country or even the world. Then again, you may be particularly fascinated by a particular ancestor, and devote your time to finding out as much as possible about him or her.

Starting out in family history

Yourself

Begin with what information you know all the dates and events you are certain of, concerning your immediate family – your birth date, your brothers’ and sisters’ birth dates, your parents’ names, marriage date and birth dates. You may also have information on uncles and aunts, or earlier generations, perhaps knowledge of your grandparents’ generation, or even further back. Do you know where these people lived, or what they did for a living? Write it all down.

‘Grill Your Granny’

Find out what knowledge is available from older family members. If your parents or grandparents, uncles and aunts, are still alive, they will probably have a lot to tell you. Do not neglect your own generation: an older cousin may remember a grandparent who died before you were born. Make a separate note of what each person says. Interview as many family members as you can, and write all the information down, in a systematic, legible and comprehensible form.

Family Documentation and Sources

What phototographs do you have? Or your parents, grandparents, cousins? Nothing is quite as thrilling as seeing a photo of a family member who died long before you were born, and checking out the resemblance to your own generation. Photographs can also provoke a whole stream of memories from older people. Copy as many photographs as you can, noting where the originals were seen, and the names of those portrayed. See what documentation exists among various members of your family. If there are copies of old birth, death and marriage certificates, this will save you spending money on getting further copies of them. Letters, wills, deeds and newspaper cuttings may all be found in cupboards or attics. Family Bibles, ‘birthday books’, and other family memorabilia may all prove invaluable to your research. Scour these records and make a note of any firm information you find, as well as where you found it.

A Family Tree

You will already have quite a lot of notes, made from your own information, from interviews with relatives, and from old certificates, cuttings and memorabilia. Now is the time to use these sources to draw up your first family tree, with yourself at the bottom, with a line linking upwards to your parents, another going upwards from them to the previous generation and so on. It does not need to be particularly neat, as long as it is understandable. Include names of brothers and sisters of your parents and grandparents. Against each of the names try to put dates and places of birth, marriage and death, and occupations. Your family tree will show you what information is already known, what is still missing, and what is most vital to find next. It will also prove to be a convenient method of explaining your requirements to librarians and archivists, avoiding the need for lengthy and complicated explanations.

Your next sources – civil registration and census

Births, Marriages and Deaths

Civil registration, which began in 1837 in England and Wales, is the system still in operation today for recording every birth, marriage and death that occurs in the U.K.

These official records are the essential links that should enable you to take your family tree back several generations beyond the memories of living family members. Registrars all over the country recorded all the births, marriages and deaths which occurred in their own local districts and copies were forwarded to London, where they were indexed. There are separate indexes for each event, and prior to 1984 they are arranged in quarterly volumes, with four books per year. The entries in the indexes are listed alphabetically by surname and the forename.

The indexes can be searched in various ways. Microfiche sets can be found at some record offices and major libraries around the country, where they can be checked free of charge (We have a set covering 1837-1950 at the History Centre). Within the last few years, several websites have begun to offer searchable, digital images of the index pages. In addition, FreeBMD is a free site on which volunteers are gradually putting transcriptions of the index pages. At the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre we have a subscription via the People’s Network to another site, Ancestry, which contains a lot of material of use for family history including civil registration and census material.

Each index entry gives the individual’s name and surname, the name of the district in which the event was registered, and a reference number. Once you think you have found the correct entry, you can use the details from the index to apply for a copy of the original certificate. Addresses given on certificates can help in tracking your family down in census returns.

Census Returns

Census returns provide snapshots of families, ‘frozen’ in time, as they were gathered together at home on one night over a century ago. They show whole family groupings and can be a very useful free supplement to the information which you acquire by buying civil registration certificates. They have been taken every ten years since 1801 (except 1941), although the 1841 census was the first to collect personal details on individuals (including ages, rounded down to the nearest five years for adults, and whether or not born in the county of residence). The 1851 census was the first to give exact ages and places of birth – or, at least, as far as people were aware of these themselves. To ensure privacy, the information from each census is closed for a period of 100 years. Even so, all of the Victorian censuses, from 1841 to 1891, are now available. The latest census available at present is that taken in 1911. Census returns are arranged by address. The records we see today are microfilms or microfiche of the enumerators’ schedules, copied from the original householders’ forms.

Census  returns often provide the link enabling the family historian to make the leap back beyond civil registration ( beginning in 1837) to parish registers ; the birthplace information given in earlier census returns may well enable you to track a family back into the late 1700s. The census can also help in many other ways. If children have different birthplaces, it indicates where and when the family have lived.  A child staying with its grandparents may lead you to a daughter’s married name, and relatives lodging with the family may suggest previously unknown branches, or perhaps the wife’s maiden name. The census can also reduce the time spent in searching the civil registration indexes: if someone is unmarried in 1881 but married in 1891, those are the ten years of indexes to search.

There are now many census indexes available, in many formats, including typescript, microfiche and CD-ROM. Several commercial websites now have names indexes linked to digital page images. The Ancestry website includes complete census indexes and images 1841-1911 for England, Scotland and Wales, and is free to use if you use the People’s Network computers at the History Centre or at any public library in Wiltshire.

Get into good habits!

Right from the outset, you should keep your records in a form which will make sense in months or years to come. Try to write notes up neatly, or word-process them, as soon as possible. Notes scrawled on the backs of envelopes, with no indication where the information was found, are a recipe for chaos.

Record what names you are searching for, what years or quarters you have checked, if there are any gaps in the records, and also if searches prove negative.( No one wants to have to check the same records more than once.)

Write down exactly what it says on the record. An 1851 census entry showing  43 year old  John Smith recorded as born at Box, is not the same as saying  that John Smith was born at Box in 1808 – although he may well have been. If you find information in a book, keep enough information to enable you to locate it, if you need to check it again. As you progress to working on sources in record offices, you should always note the reference numbers of the archives you are using; these are vital if you want to order them again. If you ever write up your family history in any form, you will need to quote the references of records on whose accuracy you are relying. If you can only vaguely recall finding a vital piece of evidence in one of a dozen bundles of deeds you looked at a distant record office, that information is as good as useless.

Be sure to note the source of every piece of information you record in your notes.

Use a computer (if it helps!)

These days, many people use computers to store their family research, to draw up family trees, and to record the information they find in a tidy and convenient way. A lot of people find e-mails a quicker and more convenient way of contacting people, and keeping in touch, than writing letters. A vast number of commercial software programmes now exist to assist genealogists. In the last few years, many of the most important original sources, like census returns and indexes of births, marriages and deaths have been digitised, and the internet has become, for many people, the easiest way to consult them.

However, it is still possible to undertake family research without touching a computer, while you can, if you wish, make use of internet resources without needing to have your own computer. For instance, the commercial Ancestry site, giving access to indexes and images of the census returns for England, Scotland and Wales, 1841-1901, as well as much other useful indexed material, is free to use if you are using the People’s Network computers at the History Centre or at public libraries in Wiltshire.

By all means look at what there is on the internet relating to your family or surname, but do not rely solely on ‘online’ sources. It is good advice to check everything you find on the internet against the original source of the information. (With the census indexes on the Ancestry site, there is a link to images of the original census pages, so you can check to see if the indexed information is accurate and complete.) The internet includes information put there by many different people; much of it may be copied from other, unchecked sources, or may be positively misleading or untrue.

While it is true that internet sources for family historians are growing all the time, we must remember that for the foreseeable future, much of the information we need will be found only in books or on paper, or on microfilm or microfiche, in various record offices and libraries. Many records can only be seen in the building which holds them, and only a very small proportion of what has been microfilmed is yet available online.

Read a book

For a lot of researchers today, the internet has become such an indispensable and comprehensive tool that they no longer do what  previous generations did –  use books to broaden their knowledge, discover new sources, answer their questions, and put their own local and specific interests into a wider context. This is a great pity, since there are now so many books in print to cater for every possible need of the family historian. There are lots of general guides; to choose one from a wide field, Starting Your Family History by Margaret Ward (2006) gives good advice for the beginner. There are also numerous books giving guidance on particular sources and types of records. Useful brief guides on a variety of sources and subjects can be found in the Gibson Guides series by Jeremy Gibson; McLaughlin Guides series by Eve McLaughlin; and My Ancestor was… series published by the Society of Genealogists.

As well as extending your knowledge, reading books will show you what to expect to find in particular records. We need to familiarize ourselves with the sources we use, because we have to remember that the records we use were not originally made for the use of future family historians; most were produced for entirely different purposes, to meet the practical needs of the Church of England and the government. By knowing what is normally found in records, we can learn to look out for what is significantly unusual in our researches. Well-written family histories, like Donald Titford’s Moonrakers in my Family (1995), which makes excellent use of Wiltshire sources, can inspire us as well as inform our own researches.  There are also several family history magazines currently on sale, which are useful for keeping up to date with recent developments and initiatives in the family history world, as well as containing informative articles, readers’ letters and queries, etc.

As a final suggestion, join your local family history society, and consider joining the ones in locations where your research is concentrated. As well as a chance to meet fellow enthusiasts, societies offer local expertise, produce journals and directories of members’ interests, and offer a chance to participate in transcription and indexing projects.

Further steps in family history

With a little time and patience, family historians should be able to get back to around 1841 using readily available records. This is discussed in some depth in our article on first steps in family history. However, from 1837 backwards the surviving records become less easily accessible, less informative and require greater levels of expertise. This is a guide to suggest resources for family historians which existed long before the introduction of civil registration. Though it makes particular reference to documents within our collection, it can be used as a guide to undertake research in any part of the country.

Parish registers

Prior to 1837, the government kept no records of its citizens. The only comparable records are parish registers, journals held at each local Anglican church into which the vicar recorded every baptism, marriage and burial performed each day. The earliest registers date from 1538 though most parishes did not begin substantive record keeping until the seventeeth century.

The vast majority of Wiltshire registers have now been deposited at the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre. A list showing the enclosing dates for the registers held by us is available here. A few small parishes are still using marriage registers started in 1837. Registers not held by us should be accessible through the church itself; we can provide you with churchwarden’s contact details if required. Please note that parish registers over 100 years old are now available to view online via the Ancestry website, which is available free of charge in the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre and in Wiltshire and Swindon libraries. Transcripts of some parish registers are also available via the Wiltshire Family History Society Website.

When using parish registers you should bear in mind that:-

• They generally record entries of baptism rather than birth, and not all children were baptised or baptised in the parish church;
• Marriages of all people except Jews and Quakers had to be performed in Anglican churches before 1837;
• Where someone is recorded as ‘of this parish’ or ‘of’ any other parish, this is not a parish of origin. To be considered ‘of’ any given parish, one only needed to be working there for six months;
• Before 1813, information given in parish registers tends to be very basic and is usually restricted to a name and date on burial entries and a name, date and parents’ names on baptismal entries.  It is extremely unusual to find names of the fathers of the bride and groom given in marriage registers before July 1837.

Bishop’s transcripts

From the late 16th century onwards, curates made yearly copies of the entries in their parish registers and returned them to the diocesan authorities. These Bishop’s transcripts (commonly referred to as BTs) are an inferior source of information compared to parish registers as they tend to be abbreviated or incomplete summaries of the registers rather than containing unique information. They are worth checking as they may give variant names, differing spellings or slightly different dates which can help in further research. They are also extremely useful when they predate surviving registers or fill gaps in them.

As the principal depository for the Diocese of Salisbury, series of BTs are kept in the History Centre for parishes in the counties of Wiltshire, Berkshire and Dorset. The series generally begin in the early 17th century, with severe gaps until after 1700 and occasional later gaps.  Those for parishes now in Salisbury Diocese continue until 1880, but those for parishes now in Bristol Diocese end in 1836, later ones being kept at the Bristol Record Office. No BTs for parishes in the Archdeaconry of Dorset survive before 1731.

Please note that it is planned that the bishop’s transcripts covering gaps in the parish registers will be published online via the Ancestry website. The Ancestry service is available free of charge in the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre and in Wiltshire and Swindon libraries.

Non-conformist registers

Though Anglican parish registers are the most overwhelming resource for family historians, they are of limited use to people researching ancestors of another denomination. Occasionally they may have a list of local dissenters, though usually the parish registers will not record non-conformist events other than marriages. There was little instruction on record keeping and maintenance within the other churches, hence non-conformist records can be difficult to locate and navigate.

Complete transcripts of the birth, baptismal and burial registers of the 71 nonconformist congregations who surrendered their registers to the Registrar General in 1837 are available in the History Centre together with a surname index, prepared by the Wiltshire Family History Society.  Hardly any of these registers begin before 1750, and many cover only the early decades of the 19th century.  Many other Nonconformist congregations have deposited their original registers in the Wiltshire and Swindon Archives.  These include Independents, Congregationalists, Baptists, Presbyterians and Methodists.  Their registers are often more haphazard than parish registers, and entries of baptism and burial are frequently interspersed with minutes of chapel meetings and other material.  Registers seem not to have survived at all for many congregations;  those which have been deposited with us are listed in the search room subject index under ‘Nonconformity’.  A list is available of Quaker registers deposited in the Archives;  in addition, there are two ‘digests’ (indexed abstracts of all Quaker birth, marriage and burial entries in Wiltshire) covering the period 1648-1837 (Accession 854/1 and 2).

If you do happen to find a non-conformist line in your family tree, you are well advised to read the appropriate My Family Were… volume published by the Society of Genealogists. Copies are available to view at the History Centre and available to purchase through their website.

International Genealogical Index (IGI)

The Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Saints (also known as the Mormon church) have an ongoing program attempting to locate every birth, baptism, marriage, death and burial record from every potential resource from every part of the world. They index and catalogue their records at their main church in America, but the indexes they produce are distributed through various formats in order to encourage further deposits of materials. Over the past few years, the IGI has been made available online through their FamilySearch website, an invaluable tool for family historians as it is essentially a digitally searchable index of baptisms, marriages and burials from parish registers not only in England but internationally.

But caution! The IGI must always be regarded as a finding aid and not a substitute for first-hand research in parish registers.  As the index is largely produced from blurry microfiche copies usually transcribed without knowledge of local abbreviations, spellings and hands, entries found on the index can be wildly inaccurate. If an entry of interest is found on the IGI, the parish register entry should always be checked not only to confirm the data but also in case the register gives any additional information.

The coverage of the IGI is relatively limited in Wiltshire; less than 50% of parish registers were included in the 1992 edition of this index of baptisms and marriages. Coverage is far greater in many other counties and the History Centre has microfiche copies of the index for the whole of the United Kingdom plus United States of America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and most former colonies and protectorates.

Marriage Licence Bonds and Allegations

Marriage licences were issued to couples who did not wish to have their wedding announced on the prior three Sundays. The licences themselves survive only by chance, as they were issued to the groom for presentation to the clergyman conducting the marriage. What usually survive are the administrative series of records leading up to the issue of licences, known as bonds and allegations.  These may contain the groom’s occupation, the couple’s parishes of residence and (sometimes) their ages, particularly if they were minors. Evidence suggests that only around one in ten marriages were performed by licence so the bonds and allegations will not reflect every marriage that occured within a diocese.

Some couples married by virtue of a licence granted by the Faculty Office or the Vicar-General, the records of which are at Lambeth Palace Library.

The Diocese of Salisbury has a virtually complete series of bonds and allegations from 1615 to 1841 except for the Commonwealth period, and these are held at the History Centre in Chippenham. There are typescript abstracts up to 1837 and all have been indexed. There was a separate series for the Peculiar of the Dean of Sarum, covering many parishes in Wiltshire, Berkshire and Dorset, for which there are abstracts and indexes at the History Centre covering the periods 1638-1645 and 1660-1837.  There were a number of other small peculiars with marriage licence records;  abstracts and indexes may also be found in the search room at the History Centre.

Wills

Wills can be an invaluable (and often overlooked) resource for the family historian. As well as suggesting the names of children, partners and other relatives along with their approximate ages, wills often include an inventory which lists everything the person owned at their time of death. Along with the descriptions within the text of the will, these often tell us more about an individual than a simple date of burial ever could and can often suggest further potential areas of research.

Before 1858, the probate of wills and the granting of administration to next-of-kin of persons who died intestate was the business of church courts.  If a person had personal property in more than one diocese the will had to be proved at the Prerogative Court of Canterbury (PCC). Generally, wills of the gentry and more substantial people were proved at the PCC; in addition the records of all wills proved between 1653 and 1660 are held with the P.C.C. wills currently at The National Archives. PCC wills can now be accessed online on the National Archives website.

About 105,000 probate records survive in the Wiltshire and Swindon Archives, these being the records of the various courts of the Diocese of Salisbury. The diocesan probate records are concerned generally with people of a lower social status than those whose wills were proved in the PCC. They were mostly from the ranks of farmers, yeomen, tradesmen and artisans.  The records of the diocesan courts normally span the period from the 16th or 17th century to 1858. The main courts were the Bishop’s (Consistory) Court, the two Archdeaconry courts (Archdeacon of Wilts in the north of the county; Archdeacon of Sarum in the south of the county), the Sub-Dean’s court covering Salisbury and Stratford-sub-Castle, and the Dean’s court.  In addition, there were several small jurisdictions covering either a single parish or group of parishes, attached to various lay or clerical dignitaries.  As a result, there are records for 28 different jurisdictions in the Archives, covering the whole of Wiltshire, parts of Dorset and Berkshire and the Devon parish of Uffculme.  In spite of the transfer of the deaneries of Malmesbury and Cricklade to Bristol Diocese in 1836, wills from these areas continued to be proved in the courts of the Archdeacon of Wiltshire and Bishop of Salisbury. The situation is complicated by the ‘inhibition’ or taking-over of the jurisdiction of most of the lower level courts every three years by the Bishop’s or Dean’s courts for a period of about six months.

The Wiltshire Wills website is being replaced by the publication of images of all the wills from the Diocese of Salisbury on the Ancestry website, which is available free of charge in WSHC and local libraries. Most are original wills and bonds, that is those actually signed by the testator or administrator, although some wills survive only as copies entered in registers.

Wills vary enormously in content and format but at their best can be unique sources of genealogical information.  Administration bonds give only names of next-of-kin and of two or three ‘bondsmen’ (sureties), who might or might not be relatives.  Inventories of the dead person’s goods and chattels may also survive, though these are rarely found after about 1750.

More details about the nature of probate records and how to use them can be found below.

After 1858, wills and probate fell under the jurisdiction of the Court Service and (for England and Wales) can be found online on the Government Probate Search. Will registers for the Salisbury District Registry (1858-1928) are held at the History Centre, but these volumes are unsuitable for photocopying although private digital photography is possible upon payment of a fee. They do not include copies of administration bonds, although the names appear in the index.

Deposited records

Many of the records which have been deposited in local county archives by various individuals and institutions can help provide you with genealogical information.  Some of the records which are most useful to the family historian include:-

• Parish records. Apart from parish registers, deposited collections from parish churches may contain churchwardens’ accounts, charity papers, records concerning the relief of the poor, etc., etc.  Such records are useful for “putting flesh on the bones” of our ancestors and are described in The Parish Chest by WE Tate (1969).
• Deeds and Leases These may survive from medieval times onwards and often contain material useful to the genealogist, sometimes giving occupations and ages of people mentioned.  Title Deeds by AA Dibben (revised 1990) and An Introduction to Reading Old Title Deeds by J Cornwall (1993) are the standard guides to their interpretation.
• Manorial and Estate Records These may also survive from medieval times.  Details of admission and surrender of copyhold tenants, lists of tenants, and information contained in estate surveys and rentals – sometimes including ages of ‘lives’ on leases –  can be valuable.  The family historian should note, however, that earlier records may well be written in Latin.  Manorial Records by D Stuart (1992) gives guidance on reading early documents.

Taxation records

A set of Land Tax Assessments dating from about 1780 to 1832 and covering all Wiltshire parishes is among the Quarter Sessions records in the History Centre (reference A1/345).  They may include names of properties and form a useful reference to landowners and occupiers. Lists of Wiltshire taxpayers for the 1576 Subsidy and the 1545 Benevolence have been published by the Wiltshire Record Society as Two Sixteenth Century Taxation Lists 1545 and 1576  (ed. GD Ramsay, 1954).  The Wiltshire Tax List of 1332 (ed. DA Crowley, 1989) appeared in the same series.

Apart from these examples, most national taxation records surviving for Wiltshire have to be consulted at The National Archives in Kew.  Few Hearth Tax returns survive for Wiltshire; those that do are available at The National Archives and are listed in List and Index Society, vol. IXXV, pp. 168-170, which is available at the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre.  References to the few records held in the Centre may be found in the subject index under ‘Taxation’.

Protestation returns, 1641

These lists of signatories to the protestation in support of the Protestant religion and against ‘Popery’ are kept in the Parliamentary Archives.  The signatories were all men of eighteen and upwards in each parish. Wiltshire returns survive for only parts of the south-eastern corner of the county, and were published by Wiltshire Family History Society in 1997.  There is a list of the parishes covered, together with a surname index, on the shelves of the History Centre search room.

Apprenticeship records

These fall into three categories:

• Pauper Children Apprenticeship of poor children, usually to husbandry, housewifery or one of the poorer handicrafts, like weaving, was a common feature of parish life from the 16th to the 19th centuries.  Records may survive either in the form of original indentures, giving the names of the child, a parent (if any), the master and the trade, or as generally less informative entries in overseers’ account books.  Records do not survive for every parish.
• Children whose parents paid a premium to the master In such cases, the apprenticeship indentures became the property of the apprenticed person when the term was completed.  For this reason very few such records have been deposited in local archives.  Between 1710 and 1808 a duty was payable on the premium and registers of the payments exist in The National Archives.  All entries concerning Wiltshire masters or apprentices from these registers from 1710 to 1760 (when the registers become less informative) were published in the Wiltshire Record Society volume, Wiltshire apprentices and their masters, 1710-1760 (1961).
• Children whose premiums were paid by charitable bodies Records may survive among the charity’s records.  Records of the county-wide Broad Town apprenticing charity 1714-1909, are in the Wiltshire and Swindon Archives, ref. 700/61-68 and 765/2,3, with a slip index of apprentices in the search room.  Records of the Duke of Somerset’s Charity (Salisbury), ref. G23/1/198, covering the period 1686 to 1774, have also been indexed.  The Archives also has a register of apprenticeships made by the Wiltshire Society, ref. 1475/3.  This Society existed to assist and apprentice the children of poor persons from Wiltshire, resident in London or in Wiltshire.  The Apprentice Registers of the Wiltshire Society, 1817-1922 were published as a Wiltshire Record Society volume in 1997.

Poor Law records

Between 1601 and 1834 responsibility for care of the poor was placed in the hands of the Overseers of the Poor in each parish.  When their records survive, they may include poor rate lists; detailed accounts of sums of money, food and clothing allocated to the poor;  examinations of the mothers of illegitimate children and bastardy bonds requiring fathers to support illegitimate children.  In addition, there may be records of the binding of poor children as apprentices, as well as a variety of documents concerning settlement.

Since a legal right to poor relief depended upon a person’s place of settlement, the determination of settlement was a crucial part of the overseers’ duties.  Two of the most useful types of document which may survive are removal orders and settlement examinations.  A settlement examination may include details of a person’s birthplace and working career as well as (sometimes) the names and ages of dependent children.  Removal orders sending paupers back to their legal place of settlement may provide helpful clues for family historians who have lost track of an ancestor. The survival of poor law records is very patchy.  Some parishes, like Longbridge Deverill, have superb collections, but in other cases nothing at all survives.  The History Centre staff will be pleased to advise searchers on surviving poor law material for a particular parish.

A large number of settlement, bastardy and apprenticeship records have been listed in some detail and indexed on a parish basis.  These lists are available at the Centre.  The booklet Annals of the Poor by E Mc Laighlin (4th ed. 1990) provides a brief introduction to the working of the poor law, and the Wiltshire Record Society volume Calendar of Bradford-on-Avon Settlement Examinations and Removal Orders 1725-98 (ed. P Hembry, 1990) shows the type of information that may be found.

Calendars of prisoners

No records survive from the various prisons in Wiltshire at all. There existed three levels of judicial enquiry: petty sessions for small crimes, quarter sessions for more substantial crimes and assizes sessions for the most severe of crimes. In tandem with the quarter sessions court (held four times a year), a calendar was produced comprised of two sections. The first half notes every individual due to be heard at court that day giving a brief summation of their crime and usually noting the level of literacy; and the second half is an audit of every person held within the county’s prisons on that date.

These calendars occur among the quarter sessions records (ref. A1/125). Some calendars have marginal annotations of the sentences passed at quarter sessions.  The prisoner’s age and crime, and sometimes parish, may be mentioned but physical descriptions are not given. The separate series of calendars covers the period 1728 to 1882, with some gaps. Before and after they may be found with the quarter sessions rolls (A1/100) though these are extremely cumbersome to navigate. Local newspapers often give the fullest accounts of trials, especially in the nineteenth century.

In the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre search room are the ‘Baddy’ and ‘Goody’ Indexes of names extracted from the calendars of prisoners between 1728 and 1849.  The Baddy Index lists all prisoners and the Goody Index victims and witnesses of crime.  They both give names and places of abode and refer the searcher to the date of the sessions at which the person was mentioned. This index is produced by the Wiltshire Family History Society and has since been uploaded to a number of pay per view sites. Contact the society for further details.

For prisoners tried at County Assizes, assize records are kept at The National Archives in Kew and may give further information.

Monumental Inscriptions

The Wiltshire Family History Society has completed a survey of all burial grounds, churchyards and cemeteries in the county.  It also gathered references to memorials noted by Sir Thomas Phillipps and the Rev. T.H. Baker in the 19th century, many of which are no longer legible. Microfiche copies of the Society’s Monumental Inscriptions Index are available for consultation at the History Centre arranged by parish. Copies are also available at the Family History Society’s Resource Centre in Devizes.

Wiltshire Family History Society

The Society aims to encourage and support the activities of family historians with interests in Wiltshire families.  Regular meetings are held at the five branches within the county.  It also publishes a quarterly journal and a range of other publications.  A transcription group transcribes, indexes and publishes parish registers, and other records, and the Society offers various services to members, including searches in its Strays and Monumental Inscriptions Indexes. Further information is given on their website.

Wiltshire Wills

The probate collection of the Diocese of Sarum alias Salisbury, more popularly known as the Wiltshire Wills collection, is published by Ancestry in partnership with Wiltshire and Swindon Archives. This collection of over 500,000 images of wills and related records from the whole of Wiltshire and Berkshire, part of Dorset and the parish of Uffculme in Devon, is being made available online in its entirety for the first time, thus completing the work of the HLF-funded Wiltshire Wills project which began in the early 2000s. There are around 118,000 wills plus related records mainly dating from the 1560s to 1858 although there are one or two earlier wills dating back to the 15th century within the archives. The related records are things like inventories of goods, administration bonds, and bonds for tuition or guardianship of children. The wills vary tremendously in length – some might only be one sheet; others can be up to thirty sheets long.

What’s a will?

A will is a way of regulating the rights of other people to your property after your death. Originally a will dealt with real estate (ie lands and buildings) and a testament dealt with personal property, eg clothing, furniture, money etc, but they have been combined into one document since the 16th century. Under an Act of Parliament of 1529 the purpose of a will was for the testator (person making the will) to pay debts, provide for their spouse, arrange for care of children and make charitable bequests for the good of their souls. They usually have a standard format and structure, starting with ‘In the name of God Amen’ and going on to commit the testator’s soul to God and their body to be buried in a named location; they go on to list the various bequests the testator wishes to make; any debts they owe; and then they name their executor(s) and sign or make their mark. Last of all there may be a probate clause in Latin, written by the court which proved the will, often just a few months after the date the will was written. It is important to remember that under the pre-1752 calendar a document dated Jan-Mar would be dated the previous year, so a will dated 17 Jan 1713 is actually 1714 under the modern calendar. If someone died without making a will the court could administer their estate under what are called ‘letters of administration’ instead.

The Value of Wills for Family History

In the 16th and 17th centuries wills were increasingly used to provide for each member of the family left behind, making them particularly useful for family history. A good will for demonstrating this is that of John Baker of Pitton in south Wiltshire, made in 1688, (P26/387), in which he bequeathes 20 shillings to his daughter Elizabeth Pilgrem, £4 each to his grandchildren John, Stephen, and Diana Seward, Anne Toomer, and William, John, Anne and Elizabeth Smart; 20 shillings to his son in law John Seward; and the residue of estate to his daughter Ann Seward, the wife of John Seward of Pitton – as you can see, three generations are mentioned in the same document, a real boon to family historians!  Wills also usefully include the occupation of the deceased – in this case a yeoman farmer – and may be accompanied by an inventory of their goods which can be very useful in showing the possessions of the deceased and their relative wealth.

Not all families were harmonious, of course – a mother who clearly had serious misgivings about what would become of her sons after her death was Margery Williams of Baydon. She added this codicil to her will in 1797: “Whereas it is the Misfortune of my sons Benjamin and Joseph to be very indiscreet and imprudent and as they have expended their Fortunes and I am extremely apprehensive any Other Property would be in like Manner Wasted and Yet unwilling that they should be left intirely Destitute…” she wills that her son Francis Williams should pay them 2 shillings a week for life!  (P5/1799/27)

People weren’t just concerned about their human relatives. Mary Goddard of Swindon included an unusual bequest for the care of her pets after her death: in 1788 she left £2 11s to her servant Grace Buckland “to take care and protection of my Cats and Dog, which I desire she will do with tenderness.” (P3/G/748)

Wills were also used to give instructions for the funeral: the 1681 will of Mary Beake, P5/1681/7 states: “I doe order that there be forty shillings layed out in Cakes and bread and that there be a Kilderkin of beer at my burial.” (A kilderkin was 16-18 gallons).

Sometimes wills tell us a lot about the personality of the testator and their sense of humour, something which you often won’t get from other records, for example this instruction in the will of Nicholas Daniell of Sutton Benger, 1726, for the inscription on his tombstone speaks volumes:

“From Gout and Pox and Plague and Women free
From Law and Physick and Divinity
And Knaves and Foole of every Degree
From care, fear, pain and hard necessity am freed. In what a happy state am I.” (P3/D/314)

An unhappy lovelife is also obvious in the will of Henry Hunt of Enford, 1773 (P1/H/1231) whose wife “with great Clamour, Violence & Outrage, endeavoured to hinder his making any will, declaring positively that he should make none.” Henry replied “Then this must be your will, not mine” and added “Thus it was she made her first Husband’s will”, meaning no will at all. Nevertheless Henry did succeed in making his will – he had no time to make a formal document but the testimony of his friends and a scribbled note made at his sickbed by one of them proved sufficient for the court.

Who could not make a will prior to 1858?

There were four main categories of people who could not legally make a will.
1) Children (boys under 14 and girls under 12)
2) People of unsound mind or lacking senses (only in the latter case if it meant they could not understand the will)
3) Those lacking full freedom – ie slaves, prisoners and married women without their husband’s consent (the latter before 1882)
4) Traitors, heretics and apostates (eg atheists)

Normally a will had to have certain elements to be legally valid: the date, the testator’s mark or signature (witnessed), and the nomination of an executor, but if no will in this format existed then other forms of will might be accepted by the courts. For example, Henry White’s lovely informal handwritten will of 1835 found on the reverse of an old letter was accepted:

Mary Ann you are My Wife
The Joy and comfort of my life
What Provedense has given to me
When I’m Dead I’ll leave for thee. (P4/1835/4)

Wills could be made on any material though normally they are on paper. Parchment wills are normally the probate copy made by the court, rather than the original.

Since making a will was possibly regarded as ‘tempting fate’ making a will was often left till the last moment when a testator was ill and facing death. If it was too late to make a written will a testator could give their wishes in the form of a verbal will, copied down – otherwise known as a nuncupative will. An interesting example of this is that of Nicholas Perry, senior, a carpenter of Salisbury St Edmund, who rode over to Combe Bissett where one of his sons lived, to tell him his will orally, because of ‘Contagion in Sarum’ in other words the well known outbreak of the Black Death in Salisbury in 1627. (P4/1627/4.)

Women and wills

Prior to the Married Women’s Property Act of 1882 a married woman could only make a will with her husband’s consent or if there was a pre-nuptial agreement which allowed her to do so. There were no restrictions on widows and spinsters making wills and therefore there are far more of these than wills of married women. These include the inventory of goods of Jane Forget, dated 1588 who had been a nun at Wilton Abbey – the will shows that even though the abbey had been dissolved for fifty years, Jane continued to live a devout life and gave away all her clothing to the poor in her will. (P5/1588/19) Women usually appear in their husband’s will as the executor of his estate, at least until the 18th century.

Probate/proving wills

During the Middle Ages the church gradually gained the right to prove or validate wills and grant administrations of the estates of the dead in all but a few places in England and Wales. The church took responsibility for validating wills and making sure the wishes of the deceased were adhered to through its courts. The church continued to hold authority until 1858, except for the Commonwealth period when the church courts were temporarily closed down in the 1640s and 50s – the wills for this period are with the Prerogative Court of Canterbury ie at the National Archives in Kew.
When someone died their will had to be taken to the appropriate court – this could be quite complicated to determine. In some years a larger court might take responsibility for a smaller one and have the right to prove their wills. Within the Diocese of Salisbury there were 28 probate courts, including the bishop’s, the two archdeacon’s, and many peculiars. If goods or land to the value of £5 were held in areas covered by the jurisdiction of more than one court, the will would be proved in the higher court. Thus if it fell into two archdeaconries it would be proved at the bishop’s court; if it was in more than one diocese it would be proved at the appropriate archbishop’s court eg Prerogative Court of Canterbury or York. Therefore wills of rich or famous people are unlikely to be found in the Diocesan collection – the PCC was also seen to confer a certain prestige so people like Jane Austen, who didn’t own a lot of property but were of a gentry background, had their will proved there.

Once in court, the executor and witnesses swore that the will was definitely the testator’s last one, and the judge, if satisfied, would grant probate. Probate had to begin within four months of the death, and often would be much sooner. If the executor refused, or if the person died without making a will, the court would appoint administrators to sort out the estate. The court kept the original will and it is the originals which form the Wiltshire Wills collection. A second copy would also be entered into the court’s register, which is why you may find two wills for the same person – they should be identical except they will lack the original mark or signature of the testator.

The executor had to arrange the funeral of the deceased, and pay for those costs, and then make an inventory of the goods. The goods were valued at their ‘second-hand’ price and gave the executor an idea of the size of the estate available to administer – debts had to be paid before any legacies could be paid. For example William Trahare of Sherborne in Dorset, a retired soldier who had fought in the Napoleonic Wars, left his pension in 1802 to William Spooner, inn-keeper, “to discharge myself of my just debt due to him.” (P5/19Reg/4)

From 1858 the proving of wills became a civil, rather than ecclesiastical, responsibility and post-1858 wills have not been included in the Wiltshire Wills project although wills of Wiltshire people dated 1858-1928 are available to see at Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre.  English and Welsh wills after 1858 can also be found online at: https://www.gov.uk/search-will-probate

You can currently access the collection of Wiltshire wills up to 1858 on Ancestry for free from home. See Wiltshire and Swindon Archives for more information.